tees 


retsiisent 
ieteratenes 














THE HISTORY OF RELIGION 
IN THE UNITED STATES 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
NEW YORK - BOSTON : CHICAGO - DALLAS 
ATLANTA + SAN FRANCISCO 


MACMILLAN & CO., LimitTED 
LONDON + BOMBAY + CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 


THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
TORONTO 


The History of Religion 
in the United States 


BY 
4 
' HENRY KALLOCH ROWE, Pu.D. 


PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND HISTORY IN THE 
NEWTON THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTION 


Rew Pork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1924 


All rights reserved 


Coprricut, 1924, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 





Set up and printed. 
Published September, 1924. 


Printed in the United States of America by 
J. J. LITTLE AND IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK 


To 
JOHN FRANKLIN JAMESON 


WHO TAUGHT ME 
TO STUDY AND TEACH HISTORY 





PREFACE 


Among the social factors that have shaped America, re- 
ligion holds a prominent place. It is overshadowed at 
times by the economic challenge flung by a new continent 
in the face of Europe. It is subordinated to political 
issues in the writing of history, to social interpretations 
in literature. It has never been obtrusive in claiming for 
itself the center of the stage. Yet nothing in American 
history is more remarkable than the growth of great de- 
nominational churches, gaining in membership faster than 
the rapid gain in population, and the pervasive interest in 
religion that is evident in American society through all 
the years of national growth. 

The history of religion in America never has been writ- 
ten adequately. As in other countries, it has been treated 
exclusively as a history of the church and from the clerical 
point of view, or it has been dismissed by secular his- 
torians in a few paragraphs. The religious phases of 
American history deserve broad and sympathetic interpre- 
tation. In the making of a free and democratic nation, 
religion has played no mean part; at the same time it has 
been a conserving, constructive force, holding fast to that 
which seemed valuable in the past and refashioning it 


we 


for a new environment and a new age, and it has made » 


chief contribution to that idealism which is credited to 
America even by those who scoff at her worship of 
Mammon. 

The significance of religion in American history has 
been its gradual emancipation from the institutionalism 
and tradition of the Old World. Coming from Europe, the 
colonists brought as a part of their heritage the ideas and 

vii 


Vill PREFACE 


forms of a religion that was shackled by tradition among 
Protestants as well as among Catholics. The power of 
that tradition could not be shaken off easily. The Euro- 
pean peoples never have succeeded in large numbers in 
the organization of free churches or the transformation of 
religious ideas. In America it became possible to think 
and act more unconventionally. 

Three phases of emancipation appeared in succession. 
The first phase was emancipation from the authority of a 
state church. This came about, both North and South, by 
the end, of the colonial period. During the same time the 
Puritan churches and their dissenting kin abandoned the 
conventional polity of the Anglican Church out of which 
they had come. The second phase was emancipation from 
the formal worship and preaching of the earlier divines, 
and an inrush of emotional evangelism from the time of 
Wesley and Whitefield intermittently to Moody and the 
popular preachers of a half century ago. The third 
phase was emancipation from the traditional ideas of a 
Protestant orthodoxy, best represented by Calvin, begin- 
ning late in the eighteenth century and continuing with 
much controversy to the present time. 

This interpretation by no means exhausts the story of 
the religious process; it does indicate something of its 
importance. The present writer is attempting merely an 
essay in interpretation. It is his hope that it may help 
to create a larger interest in the rich field of the history 
of American religion. 

Henry Kattocu Rowe. 


Newton Centre, Massachusetts, 
September, 1924, 


CONTENTS | 


CHAPTER 


i 
IT 
Tit 
LY; 


Vv 
VI 
VII 


THe HerITaGe FROM OVERSEAS 
MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENTS . 
TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM . 
Tue ConsEQUENCES OF FREEDOM 
RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 


ADVENTURES IN ALTRUISM 


THe Reticgious Minp In THE MAKING . 


RATIONALIZING RELIGION 
SocraLizInG RELIGIon 
SPIRITUALIZING RELIGION 
THe CHURCHES 


TENDENCIES TOWARDS UNItTy 


104 
122 
141 
158 
174 
193 





THE HISTORY OF RELIGION 
IN THE UNITED STATES 





THE HISTORY OF RELIGION 
IN' THE UNITED STATES 


TI. THE HERITAGE FROM OVERSEAS 


JUTTING into the cold waters of the North Atlantic the 
island of Newfoundland faces the Old World like the prow 
of a continent. Against it beat the impatient tides that 
sweep unchecked over leagues of ocean. Storms strike 
remorselessly on sea and shore, and thick fogs obscure 
them without warning. Down the Labrador coast drift 
the icebergs, sweeping majestically past the island prow to 
melt into the warm currents from the south. Winter 
broods long months over the land, and shrouds the dan- 
gerous sea with Arctic night. So forbidding is Nature’s 
frown that it seems as if she meant that there should be 
no thoroughfare to the north. 

Yet into the icy seas that lie still farther north seafaring 
Norsemen came as early as the tenth century, made set- 
tlement in Greenland, and scouted to the mainland on 
adventure bent. Freebooting adventurers they were, 
balking at the Arctic no more than at the Mediterranean, 
ready to trade with the natives if they saw hope of gain, 
or as ready to fight if it better served their will. They 
had broken away from the control of European civilization 
before it had fully laid its hand upon them, but civilization 
followed them. With it came the ecclesiastical system to 
which they belonged. Priests of the Catholic church 
wrestled against Norse superstitions, or in discouragement 
accommodated their creeds to the simple minds of the 
settlers. The Pope of Rome appointed a bishop in Green- 

1 


2 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


land for the cure of American souls. Churches, a cathe- 
dral, even monasteries were evidences that the medizval 
faith of Europe was becoming acclimated on the edge of 
the Old World. But settlements and church alike failed 
to make permanent conquest of the northern approaches 
to America. Mismanagement of the trade that had sprung 
up with settlement, hostility of the native Skraellings, 
and not least of all the rigor of the climate, combined to 
bring disaster, and the Norse chapter in American history 
came to an end. 

East of Newfoundland lie the Grand Banks, where cod 
swarmed long before fishermen knew of their whereabouts. 
But fish was in good demand in European markets, and 
hardy French and Portuguese sailors could scent the cod 
as surely as the modern prospector can see traces of oil. 
Not far from the time when Norsemen ceased to be heard 
from Jersey and Breton and Portuguese fishermen might 
have been seen there tossing on the swell of the ocean, 
if the fog was not too thick to distinguish ship from shore. 
They dared the long voyage across the Atlantic, braved 
the perils of fog and shore, dried their catch on the rocks, 
and packed it away for the voyage home, because they 
knew that back there millions of good Catholics would 
patronize the fish market on days when meat was for- 
bidden, and that the Newfoundland trade would be profit- 
able, even though it was distant and dangerous. They 
were good Catholics themselves, and when the fog fell 
without warning and they had to grope their way blindly 
over the Banks, they piously crossed themselves and put up 
a prayer to the Virgin, though in the same breath they 
swore lustily when their boats ran afoul of one another. 

From the prow of Newfoundland the continent falls 
away a thousand miles to Florida. Off that southern shore 
Columbus, an Italian mariner in the employ of the sov- 
ereigns of Spain, sighted another island in 1492, and went 
ashore to raise the standard of the same Cross that the 
Norse adventurer and the Breton fisherman venerated, 


THE HERITAGE FROM OVERSEAS 3 


and to offer his thanksgivings to the same Virgin. Like 
the other voyagers, he was an adventurer, but a good 
Catholic did not forget his religion in the midst of his 
occupations. After pleasant cruising in the warm south- 
ern seas Columbus returned, not with a cargo of ill-smell- 
ing fish, but with a wonderful story of discovery and a 
promise of gold to the future explorer. 

While Spaniards listened with mouths agape to the 
strange tale of western discovery and French housewives 
were dickering at the market for the salt codfish, the savage 
Indians of America and their half-barbarous Mexican 
cousins roamed the woods and fields or went about their 
occupations in the centers of population, as their fathers 
had done before them, little dreaming that an ocean high- 
way had been explored that would bring them into fatal 
contact with another hemisphere, where men jostled one 
another in the streets, strove for the prizes of industry, 
and made gestures of interest in another world on Sundays 
and holy days. The Indians enjoyed the freedom of broad 
ranges, fought rather than traded for what they wished, 
and practiced their own magic arts of religion. Their 
animistic beliefs were not very different from those of 
other peoples in the same stage of culture. They had their 
spirits to venerate, as the Christians had their saints. 
They had their ceremonies and incantations, and their 
medicine men to placate the evil spirits that they feared. 
They had queer interpretations of their experiences and 
of the powers that seemed to control them, and they looked 
with anticipation to a future existence in happier hunting 
grounds. 

The contacts with America that nad peen made both 
North and South came at a time when Europe was astir 
with energy. While fishermen and explorers were trying 
their fortunes in western waters, and Indians were roam- 
ing over their ample acres, the people of Europe were 
entering upon a period of high adventure that was to 
sweep multitudes of them from their old moorings. They 


4. THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


had lived long under the static conditions of medieval life. 
They had thought in the old grooves. Their orbits of life 
were contracted. Children were born on the rural manor, 
grew to maturity without schooling, inherited the hard lot 
of peasants, worked, drank and gossiped in their small 
village, and died without ever going more than a few miles 
from home. Within the limits of a market town artisans 
plied their crafts, and traders bought and sold, but only 
occasionally went farther afield to a district fair. In any 
case they had little interest in the larger social relations. 
They were governed locally by a lord of the manor, more 
remotely by a sovereign whom they never saw, but they 
felt little sense of political obligation, except for the 
payment of taxes and an occasional service. Aside from 
their daily routine their almost sole interest was in 
religion. In their ignorance they were extremely super- 
stitious. Much of their limited experience they could not 
understand. They lived in fear of unfriendly super- 
natural powers. Expecting a future life, they dreaded 
the untried experience. They believed what the village 
priest told them about it, and according to him the chances 
of suffering were vastly greater than the chance of Dliss, 
and the only way to escape was to follow implicitly the 
directions of the church. There was only one church, the 
church that their ancestors had known, the church that 
for centuries had taken its orders from Rome. The peas- 
ant and his lord, the town artisan and the village burgher, 
the laity and the clergy everywhere were parts of an 
ecclesiastical system that claimed, and most of the time 
exercised, absolute authority over the minds of kings and 
serfs. This absolutism was possible because it was neces- 
sary for present safety and future salvation to belong to 
the System, for the church controlled the road to Heaven, 
but the church was growing unpopular, because its meth- 
ods were sometimes unscrupulous and the tolls laid upon 
the wayfarers were frequent and heavy. 

The church, with other institutions of a static social] 


THE HERITAGE FROM OVERSEAS 5 


system, was caught in a wave of progressive change dating 
from the twelfth century. By the inevitable laws of social 
causation a new era was in process of creation. The Norse 
adventurers in Greenland and Vineland were too early to 
share in it, but their spirit of adventure was akin to it. 
The Breton fisherman on the Banks did not sense it, be- 
cause his mind was not in the current of intellectual 
change, though he was a pioneer on new seas. The Span- 
iards who accompanied and followed Columbus were 
defenders of the old medizval order, even while they ex- 
plored and exploited a new continent. But in Europe 
kings and scholars, merchants and priests, caught the 
ground swell of the new era. Sovereigns consolidated their 
territories; nations came to birth. With increasing power 
kings were able to tax the merchants for their coin, and 
to organize armies that were not dependent on the fickle 
good will of feudal retainers. Money was increasing in 
abundance with the increase of travel, the expansion of 
avenues of trade, and the growth of busy centers of popu- 
lation where manufacturing and commerce naturally in- 
creased in volume. Thought was stimulated by the con- 
tacts of keen minds in the universities that sprang up 
wherever groups of scholars gravitated together. 

Under the spur of these tendencies men ventured forth 
on new paths. Kings and their ambitious ministers 
dreamed and schemed for empire, until Charles of Spain, 
the most successful of them, had become Emperor of all 
the Germanies as well as titular sovereign of a vast Span- 
ish domain. Merchant adventurers organized great trad- 
ing companies and tapped the resources of lands on the 
border of civilization. Students ventured into intellectual 
fields beyond those limited areas of scholastic discussion 
in which the medieval schoolmen browsed. Priests and 
even laymen made new ventures of faith beyond the con- 
fines that had been mapped out by the church. Waldensi- 
ans in the Latin lands, Anabaptists in middle Europe, Lol- 
lards in England, dared to question the teaching and the 


6 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


ecclesiastical authority of Rome, and early in the sixteenth 
century Germany was aflame with ecclesiastical revolt 
under the bold leadership of Martin Luther. 

Religious revolt cut across the whole fabric of society. 
Religion was the one thing that all men had in common, 
the one bond that held them together as it held them to the 
past. It seemed too sacred to touch, and the church that 
represented it claimed to be immune to criticism, but the 
mind of the new age, keen and far ranging, did not spare 
the foibles and failures of an institution that was hoary 
with age and respectability, and as part of a social system 
that was passing Catholicism had to meet the attacks of 
determined reformers. 

In the very year when Cortez was pushing the Spanish 
advance into Mexico Martin Luther with his followers 
was challenging the church to a trial of strength in Ger- 
many. Spanish discoverers and Newfoundland fishermen 
might be content to take the conventional religion of their 
native lands, but while they were voyaging in the West 
bold adventurers in the region of faith were making dis- 
coveries that were to affect the world no less powerfully 
than the discovery of a new continent. As Columbus, 
defying the popular opinions of his time, trusted himself 
to the trade winds that bore him steadily westward, and 
opened a pathway over the high seas to a New World, so 
the Saxon monk, standing alone in the German city of 
Worms before the assembled dignitaries of church and 
state, dared to defy the conventional religious opinions of 
his day, and relying on his personal faith in God rather 
than in the kind offices of the church, blazed a new way 
to Heaven for half of Europe. The first was the discovery 
of a larger physical world, the other of a new world of 
thought and spiritual experience. The geographical dis- 
coveries of Columbus made Europe and the Mediterranean 
seem small; the religious discovery of Luther dwarfed the 
narrow arena in which the mind had trodden the treadmill 
of its conventional thought. Each of these men had his 


THE HERITAGE FROM OVERSEAS 14 


forerunners, each his broad-visioned successors, but from 
these two onward the static age of medievalism definitely 
lay behind. Ahead was the surge of modern life. 

The new era of thought did not disturb the first Amer- 
ican pioneers. Gentlemen adventurers were absorbed in 
facing the dangers and hunting for the treasures that 
America offered. They mapped its shores, penetrated its 
hinterland, plundered its natives, and with equal zeal 
pressed after the spoil of its mines and the elusive elixir 
of its fountains of youth. They prepared the way for 
those who would fare forth later and marry the virgin 
land and sink the roots of their European civilization in 
its fertile soil. Spanish noblemen took with them their 
Catholic priests to plant the banner of the Cross alongside 
the banner of Spain, for their religion was a part of the 
equipment of their Latin civilization. They had a pious 
wish to extend their system of ecclesiastical insurance to 
the pagan natives, and under their auspices Franciscan 
friars penetrated the far interior of the Southwest as 
missionaries, but Spanish piety did not prevent fighting 
with the pueblo Indians of the interior, looting the prop- 
erty of Peruvian and Mexican chiefs, and condemning the 
Indians to work in the mines as slaves. A century later 
French voyageurs into Canada, took with them their 
Catholic confessors, and devoted Jesuit missionaries pushed 
into the interior to propagate their faith among the natives 
of the North. But neither Spain nor France accomplished 
results, material or spiritual, that were commensurate 
with the energy of the pathfinders, though they per- 
formed the useful task of blazing trails both North and 
South. 

The failure of Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries to 
accomplish permanent results was not due to their indo- 
lence or unfaithfulness. The annals of their missions are 
filled with heroism as inspiring as any that missionary 
history affords. They explored unknown territory over an 
astonishingly wide area, pushed into native villages at the 


8 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


peril of their lives, picked up as much as they could of the 
language and preached to the people, gathered converts for 
instruction, and tried to explain to unwilling listeners the 
meaning of the Christian faith. But in the South the 
harsh demands of the Spaniards alienated the Indians, who 
honored the Christian religion and its missionaries only 
as long as they were kept in awe of political authority, 
and in the North the savages tortured and killed the Jesuit 
fathers in spite of the efforts of the missionaries to tame 
them. 

Meantime other persons were making intellectual ex- 
plorations in Europe. With zeal equal to American 
explorers German, Dutch, and English adventurers along 
the new reaches of thought sloughed off the restrictions 
of the philosophy, science and theology of the Middle 
Ages, and struck out boldly in new directions. Humanism 
flourished in the schools of the growing towns. Books were 
multiplied by means of new printing devices. Fresh 
delight came from the pages of the pagan classics, and 
a new insight into the meaning of religion from the pages 
of the New Testament. Pioneers broke new paths for the 
feet of pilgrims to the Holy City. Luther and Calvin and 
Knox and Cranmer mapped out the confines of the new 
faith and the channels of grace, and denied the divine 
rights of a Catholic church that claimed a monopoly of 
religion. 

The seventeenth century focused these two ventures, the 
spiritual and the temporal, upon the Atlantic coast of 
North America. The high tide of European thought and 
activity swept across the ocean, as the waters at their flood 
dashed against the prow of the continent at Newfoundland. 
The ventures were prophetic of a new energy and inde- 
pendence that were to characterize the people of the New 
World. Time was to reveal a wealth of material resources 
that have made the Spanish mines seem pygmies, an indus- 
try and invention that have surpassed the wonder of the 
discovery of America, and a moral and religious develop- 


THE HERITAGE FROM OVERSEAS 9 


ment that has gone far beyond the adventuring thoughts 
of sixteenth century pioneers. 

The American explorations of the sixteenth century 
were succeeded by the colonizing enterprises of the seven- 
teenth. Spain and France, both Catholic nations, had 
tried to transplant their Latin civilization and their old 
faith into the new regions and had failed, save on the 
borders north and south. Their methods were not efficient. 
They were to find spheres of activity where they could 
develop their own institutions, but they were not to 
share permanently in opening up those temperate regions 
of North America that awaited the dynamic activity of 
the Teuton and the Celt. In the new century the Protes- 
tant Dutch and Swedes and English, aided by many Ger- 
mans, French, and Scotch-Irish, made their successful 
attempts along the coast from Maine to Florida. Holland 
on the Hudson and Sweden on the Delaware established 
commercial enterprises which might have been permanent, 
if each had been unmolested, but the Dutch absorbed the 
Swedes and then had to yield to the superior power of the 
English, for they ventured their undertakings at a time 
when England was driving forward for the same prize. 
England had gained a new national unity during the long 
reign of Elizabeth, and a remarkable energy, coupled with 
an increasing fund of commercial capital to apply to new 
economic opportunities, made it possible for her to succeed 
where her rivals failed. Enterprising capitalists organized 
commercial companies to exploit the latent wealth of 
America, planned colonies as bases of trade, and found 
colonists both from the British Isles and from the Conti- 
nent who for economic, social, or religious reasons were 
willing to expatriate themselves three thousand miles 
away. 

Religion had a part in the colonization of America, but 
it was not the dominant factor. In certain colonies it, 
was the primary concern of the majority of the emigrants, 
but even in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, where the 


10 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. &. 


religious factor was strongest, many persons did not share 
the spiritual concern of the promoters of the colony, and 
even the church leaders felt the inducements to material 
ain. 

: No one social factor is the key to the interpretation of 
the history of America. Economic necessity, social pres- 
' sure, the spirit of adventure, the scourge of persecution, 
all were among the driving forces that urged men and 
women overseas, sent them out along the advancing fron- 
tiers, and determined the nature of their occupations and 
environment. Religion was prominent among these fac- 
tors, because it was so dynamic an element in the Euro- 
pean life of the period. As the medieval man of whatever 
social grade regarded religion as his most vital concern, 
inasmuch as eternity was infinitely longer than earthly 
. time, and submissively obeyed the word of the:priest, so 
the modern man, emancipated from sacerdotal thraldom 
and sure that the Protestant path was the only way to 
Heaven, was prepared to sacrifice everything else, if neces- 
sary, for the satisfaction of his soul. Religious differences 
were the cause of bitterness in communities, even in house- 
holds. They caused civil strife and foreign wars. The 
losers felt the heavy hand of persecution, and they took 
flight abroad. ven where persecution amounted to little 
more than denunciation of heresy or the prevention of 
unconventional religious practices, dissenters felt the irk- 
someness of the situation, and were glad to expatriate 
themselves, especially if there was a fair prospect of eco- 
nomic gain at the same time. 

The history of the Protestant Reformation makes it 
plain that human motives are always mixed. Those who 
called themselves Protestants accepted the new thought, 
sometimes because their emotions responded to a revolu- 
tionary preacher, sometimes because they found new Bible 
teachings that appealed to their reason, sometimes because 
their neighbors were accepting the change, sometimes be- 
cause they hated the priest or disliked to pay for the old 


THE HERITAGE FROM OVERSEAS 11 


ecclesiastical system. Princes and merchants supported 
the religious revolution in some cases because they saw 
hope of larger revenues for themselves if the tribute of the 
faithful stopped flowing to Rome. Expediency counted 
with them more than conviction. Individuals there were 
who so delighted in their emancipation from the control 
of the priest that they objected to all law. They did not 
hesitate to modify the forms of their creeds, their organi- 
zations and their worship, and then they conceived of 
the modification of government and the social order. In 
their new freedom from overhead authority and under 
the influence of popular demagogues they yielded to the 
ferment of ideas and broke into social as well as religious 
revolution. Large numbers of men and women got a 
genuine new vision of personal religion; though they threw 
off the authority of the old ecclesiastical system, they did 
not lose their loyalty to God, and they found in the Bible | 
the guidance that they had been accustomed to look for 
from the priest. They were peaceable and orderly. Both 
kinds of Protestants were to be found among the Ana- 
baptists of Germany in the sixteenth century, and again 
among the Puritans of England in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, but the disorderly sort gave an excuse to the political 
authorities to interfere with the freedom of the Protestant 
movement, and to bring it under national authority. The 
regulators tried to stabilize religion by standardizing doc- 
trines and practices through church councils, organizing 
ecclesiastical systems as virtually departments of state, 
and insisting on conformity to the will of the sovereign. 
Within a century from Luther’s declaration of religious 
independence at Worms the nations of northern Europe 
had completed this standardizing process by nationalizing 
religion. 

When, therefore, the Dutch emigrated to New Nether- 
land they took with them their Reformed church; when 
Sweden sent her colonials to Delaware, they transplanted 
their Lutheranism; when England established her first 


12 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


permanent settlement in Virginia, the Church of England 
was a part of the establishment. When England at a later 
time appropriated the territory of her rivals, she extended 
over it her ecclesiastical authority. This arbitrary method 
was in harmony with the autocratic methods of govern- 
ment that prevailed, but it did not tend to vitalize religion, 
and it provoked dissent. 

The religious history of the colonial period in America 
can be understood only as these two factors of authority 
and dissent are kept in mind. The conservative principle 
of ecclesiastical standardization and authority received 
recognition in most of the colonies. Although Catholicism 
had lost prestige in Europe, and was to have an incon- 
spicuous place in the English colonies of America, the 
Catholic principle of external authority in religion sur- 
vived in the Church of England. Hence in most of the 
colonies the people supported the church that was estab- 
lished for all; yet in the same colonies was an insurgent 
element that magnified its right of dissent. Mingled with 
the practical undertaking of subduing a new continent is 
the effort of either party to subdue the will of the other to 
a religious principle. 

The care of religion appears as a function of govern- 
ment from the beginning of successful English coloniza- 
tion in Virginia. The Company under whose auspices 
the venture was made was not indifferent to the religious 
interests of the settlers. The initial settlement at James- 
town had its Anglican chaplain, and before his departure 
from England to the governorship of Virginia Lord Dela- 
ware was admonished “to look not at the gain, the wealth, 
the honor, but at those high and better ends that concern 
the kingdom of God,” and to “take the devil prisoner in 
open field and in his own kingdom.” The observance of 
religious obligations by the settlers was made compulsory. 
Citizens were expected to be members of the colonial 
church, and provision was made for church lands and the 
support of ministers. But it was not the religious motive 


THE HERITAGE FROM OVERSEAS 13 


that sent the first settlers to Virginia. The men of social 
rank who became owners of estates, and the indentured 
servants and other laborers or handicraftsmen, were will- 
ing to give nominal adherence to the church, and to attend 
its services when not too inconvenient, but religion did not 
claim precedence among their interests. The Virginia 
council requested the assistance of the Bishop of London, 
and his spiritual jurisdiction was recognized thereafter. 
The official church in Virginia was handicapped by lack 
of a sufficient. number of ministers and by the poor quality 
of most of those who came out from England. This was 
due partly to the meager support offered by the Virginia 
people. Citizens were not deeply religious and were glad 
to escape from clerical admonitions. They paid salaries 
in tobacco, often of a poor quality and value. Ministers 
were left dependent on the good will of their local vestries 
as there was no bishop’s authority to check up conditions. 
Jt was unfortunate also that the Church of England was 
not insistent upon spiritual qualifications as prerequisite 
to ministerial ordination. ‘Too many men were in orders 
to provide themselves with an easy living. Some of the 
most worthless of them drifted to the colonies. It is not 
strange that Virginia parsons were charged with being 
fonder of English sports than of studying Sunday sermons. 
If a man was conscientious, his parish was likely to prove 
too large for efficient oversight. The result of all these 
conditions was that people, scattered on their plantations, 
went to church infrequently, and religion was generally 
neglected. Indifference to religion and the meager supply 
of clergymen continued until the Revolutionary war, when 
Episcopacy narrowly escaped destruction along with the 
government of the mother country. 

The colonial church of Virginia greatly needed a bishop 
who could have proper oversight of the local parishes and 
could discipline the clergy. That was one of the valuable 
assets of the episcopal system. Occasional efforts were 
made to secure such appointment, but the opposition of 


x 


14 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


clergy or government prevented. In lieu of a bishop 
James Blair, a Scotchman, went out in 1689 to represent 
the Bishop of London with the title of commissary. It was 
his job to visit and inspect parishes and tone up the char- 
acter of religion. He fitted admirably into the local situ- 
ation, and proved to be one of the most useful men in the 
colonial churches of America during a period of more 
than fifty years. Very early he saw the need of a training 
school for prospective clergy; his influence brought about 
v the founding of the College of William and Mary, and he 
was made its first president. The student body was small; 
especially was it difficult to induce young men to enter 
the ministry when it was necessary to make an expensive 
and uncomfortable voyage to England for ordination. 

In Maryland the reputation of the Anglican clergy was 
worse even than in Virginia. As late as 1753 a visiting 
clergyman wrote to the Bishop of London: “It would 
really, my lord, make the ears of a sober heathen tingle 
to hear the stories that were told me by many serious per- 
sons of several clergymen in the neighborhood of the parish 
where I visited.” They had such an ill reputation in 
other colonies that an unusually bad minister was referred 
to scornfully as a ‘Maryland parson.” Thomas Bray, who 
* became commissary, sailed to the colony from England 
with intentions similar to those of Blair in Virginia. 
Before leaving he had collected parish libraries for the 
clergy, and once there he attempted to purify and 
strengthen the churches, but unfortunately ecclesiastical 
circumstances shortly compelled his return to England. 
His most permanent contribution to religion in America 

_was his influence in the organization of two missionary 
“ agencies in England, the Society for Promoting Christian 
Knowledge and the Society for the Propagation of the 
Gospel, which were useful in the spread of knowledge and 
in missionary activity among negroes and Indians as well 
as among colonists in America. 

The character of the Anglican clergy in the colonies 


THE HERITAGE FROM OVERSEAS 15 


that were established farther south was more exemplary. 
They worked hard at teaching school as well as conducting 
church services, and gave moral and spiritual counsel to 
negro slaves and Indians as willingly as to white citizens. 
This fact made the official church of the royal colonies in 
that section less obnoxious, and the people were more 
generous in their support. The Church of England rep- 
resented to them the institutional life and civilization of 
the mother country. But the experience of the South 
generally with the Church of England was not favorable 
to a church establishment. There were times when colonial 
officials meddled, and such interference was always pos- 
sible. The governor was supposed to be the patron of the 
church, and he gave it social standing. The legislature 
could tax the people for the support of the church, and 
this benefit was not shared by dissenting bodies. Yet the 
church lost more than it gained from these connections 
and privileges. Especially did it suffer from the absence 
of a bishop to confirm the young people in church mem- 
bership and to ordain a native clergy. Far better would 
it have been to throw the colonial churches on their own 
responsibility, permitting them to grow vigorous through 
self-reliance. As it was they were kept in leading strings 
with very ineffective guidance. 

In the absence of a satisfactory colonial church dis- 
senting groups began to collect from an early time. » 
Various representatives of English Puritanism made their 
way to the Southern colonies. Puritanism should be re- 
membered as a movement of dissent before it crystallized 
into an institution with authority. Presbyterians and 
Baptists went into Maryland and Virginia, and found 
footing in the Carolinas. Quakers ventured into Virginia 
about the time they suffered in Boston. They were fined 
and imprisoned, but persisted. George Fox journeyed in 
the Southern colonies, and people listened appreciatively 
to men who had the spirit of religion in them. Quarterly 
and yearly meetings provided permanent organization. 


16 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


At a later time Methodists were welcomed before they had 
separated frei the Church of England. They had spirit- 
ual fervor, but they belonged to the church of their fathers. 
There were several Huguenot groups; a company of Ger- 
mans settled above the falls of the Rappahannock formed 
a useful frontier guard; Georgia had a mixed population 
of Continental sectarians as well as Englishmen. Against 
the opposition of the ecclesiastical system of the Southern 
royal colonies the principle of dissent maintained itself, 
- sometimes quietly, again vigorously, until the Revolution, 
when in the stronghold of Virginia itself the established 
principle of authority in religion yielded to the principle 
of freedom. Meantime other experiments were being 
staged in an effort to compromise between the Old World 
principle of a state church and the New World doctrine 
of ecclesiastical independence. 


II. MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENTS 


Tue principle of overhead authority in religion fast- 
ened itself generally upon the English colonies in the 
North as in the South. It proved difficult, even for the 
Puritans, to throw off at once the inherited ideas of 
centuries. The Puritans who settled Massachusetts Bay 
were the progressives of the English Reformation. Not 
content with the changes that had been made in the forms 
of the national religion, they were determined to purify 
the church further by eliminating such survivals of Cathol- 
icism as the use of the cross in worship, the surplice in 
the dress of the clergy, and the ring in marriage. A few 
went so far as to become Independents in religion. But 
most of them were not so radical in purpose as to wish to 
disestablish the national church. Some of them preferred 
presbyters to bishops, but most of them would conform, 
whatever failure might happen to their program. Puritan- 


ism is important in history, therefore, as an attitude of / 


protest against abuses in a system that was regarded as 
essentially good rather than a definitely planned secession 
from the system. The story of the process by which Eng- 
lish Puritanism became transformed into New England 
Congregationalism is illustrative of the slow emancipation 
of the American mind from its English inheritance. 
Puritanism has been defined so many times that it 
seems superfluous to coin new phrases, but it is important 


4 


to remember that it was of greater consequence as an, 


attitude than as an institution. As an instrument of gov- 

ernment it proved a failure both in England and America. 

As a moral censorship it was too stern, and provoked an 

unwholesome reaction. As an interpretation of religion 
17 


18 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


it was too narrowly theological, and too out of sympathy 
with an abounding life. But as an attitude of mind 
towards the ecclesiastical system that had been taken over 
without substantial change from Catholicism, it was a 
healthful ferment in old English society. 

The Puritan attitude was not that of the bulk of Eng- 
lishmen. In every day life most persons were far more 
interested in making a living than in discussing religious 
doctrines and practices, and claiming a right to their own 
opinions. Religious leaders might dispute about the 
merits of Calvinism, Arminianism, or Socinianism, or the 
origin and efficacy of presbyterianism and episcopacy, but 
Tom and Will and Dick were well satisfied to leave such 
abstruse topics to the college-bred clerics, and to find their 
diversions at the alehouse when the day’s labor was at an 
end. If they were conventionally reverent and sociably 
minded, they foregathered in the churchyard on Sunday 
and at the stroke of the bell took their places in the parish 
church to make the sign of the cross and join in the 
responses as far as memory served, but except for super- 
stitious practices when they were afraid of a calamity 
religion meant little in the experience of every day. 

The genesis of the Puritan protest can be traced to the 
Continent. Puritanism had its strength in the sturdy 
middle class of independent English farmers and pros- 
perous townsmen. The landed aristocracy was religiously 
conservative, as it was politically. The working people 
of England were never much affected by Puritanism. It 
was especially the religion of the class of people who 
were making money by trade, and whose children were to 
become capitalists. Merchants in the eastern counties of 
England did business with the Continent, and through 
eastern and southern seaports an exchange of ideas took 
place as of merchandise. Religious refugees sailed for 
safety at Geneva or Amsterdam, when persecutions broke 
out at home. Others on occasion fled from the Continent. 
for haven in England from the tyranny of Catholic Aus- 


MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENTS 19 


tria, Spain, or France. Exponents of the Protestant 
theology came across the Channel from Strassburg or 
Basle or Geneva, and remained to teach at Cambridge 
University. | 

The Puritans were sermon tasters and liked to hear 
foreign preachers. They were inveterate Bible readers, 
and they had their English version prepared by English 
refugees at Geneva. The canny merchant trading wool 
for the manufactured goods of the Low Countries never 
overlooked his economic gains, but his religious belief 
swayed his mind. Whatever his business traits, his atti- 
tude towards God was humble and sincere. Rejecting the 
sovereignty of Rome, he had substituted the Genevan doc- 
trine of Calvin regarding the sovereignty of God. He 
believed all men sinners before God, bound in the grip of 
Satanic power, and if a man would escape the evil he must 
be continually on the alert to break loose from the hold 
of temptation and sin. The sins that troubled him were 
not the social sins of greed and injustice and harsh atti- 
tudes of man to man, but the frivolity and superficiality 
of life, and the unresisted inclination to self-indulgence. 
In his belief the divine will had elected a few to be saved 
from general condemnation in the day of judgment, and 
it was comfortable to feel that he was among the chosen, 
but he must be on his guard continually, must take life 
with all seriousness, and must strive to know the will of 
God. He was awed by his sense of personal responsibility 
to God. What the Catholic lightly relegated to the priest 
the Puritan felt weigh heavily upon his own soul. Help- 
less though he was to righten himself with God, he was, 
as he thought, under the sternest obligation to examine 
himself and by rigorous self-analysis to scourge his fallen 
nature. This belief in the difficulty of righteousness and 
the omnipresence of evil, even among the elect, gave to 
the Puritan a soberness of spirit that has seemed morose- 
ness. It is'a mistake to think that he was always solemn, 
that he never relaxed, even in the privacy of the family 


20 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


circle, but life was serious, and he could never forget that 
goodness was rare and difficult. He inclined to exalt his 
own virtues in contrast to the vices that he saw around 
him. He exaggerated small failings, either in individuals 
or in the church. Nothing was petty that fell below the 
divine standard, as he understood it. 

To believe unquestioningly in the divine rightness of 
one’s own opinions, whether in religion or politics, is to In- 
vite bigotry to enthrone itself in one’s nature. Convinced 
that the person or the institution that did not agree with 
him was wrong as well as mistaken, the Puritan spent his 
energy trying to effect the ecclesiastical changes that 
seemed urgent. He disliked especially the forms of wor- 
ship in the Anglican Church. With its doctrines he had 
no quarrel. Though he found himself in opposition to 
the king or queen, he did not curb his own will. The 
divinity that hedged a king was as nothing to the divinity 
that spoke to his own conscience. Such opinions carried 
into politics were to justify to the mind of the Puritan 
the execution of King Charles I. As yet the Puritans 
confined their program to protests and petitions. After 
these proved ineffectual most of them with ill grace ac- 
cepted their ecclesiastical defeat, and accommodated 
themselves to the Church from which they could not bear 
to separate. Some persisted in their opposition until 
they won temporary success under Cromwell. Others clung 
to the fiction that they were still good Anglicans and loyal 
Englishmen, but they were ready to consider the advisa- 
bility of emigrating overseas in order to have their own 
way, when agitation seemed futile in England. To them, 
as to thousands of later European emigrants, America 
loomed as the hope of the future. 

While the larger part of the most determined Puritans 
were coming slowly to this position, a few hundred persons 
took the extreme action of withdrawing from the Church 
of England and organizing their own independent con- 
gregations. ‘They had not only become convinced that it 


MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENTS 21 


would be impossible to purify a church whose membership 
was as inclusive as the nation, but as they read the Bible 
that was to them authoritative they became satisfied that 
there was no more sanction for Anglicanism than for 
Catholicism. There was no hierarchy or ritual in the 
New Testament, no episcopal cathedral in Galilee. They 
believed that the true church of Christ was composed of 
the few who were genuinely Christian, and that it was 
their duty to separate from the large majority. 

Soon several Separatist congregations emigrated to 
Holland. Two of these groups made history. One was 
the congregation in Middleburg. Its minister was Robert 
Browne, formerly an Anglican clergyman. He published 
a book that he called “Reformation without Tarying for 
Anie,” and in it he set forth the fundamental principles 
that became basic in English and American Congregation- 
alism. For him the church was ‘‘a company of redeemed 
believers, joined in covenant.” It was a voluntary, like 
minded group. It was independent of outside control, 
with the privilege of choosing its pastors and directing its 
affairs. Like the Church of England, it recognized the 
potential participation of the children of members, and 
baptized them, expecting them to enter into full member- 
ship when they came to years of understanding. The Con- 
gregational church had no place for episcopacy or an his- 
torical succession of the clergy. Logically it meant the 
separation of church and state, and the establishment of 
full religious autonomy. Browne did not remain true to 
his own principles, returning later to the Anglican fold 
from which he had come, but he had set forth so clearly 
the fundamental principles of a new and free organization 
of religion that they gained permanent root. Browne’s 
followers were known for a time as Brownists, later as 
Congregationalists from the independence of the local 
congregation. 

The second of the groups was the Pilgrim church at 
Leyden, of which John Robinson was the minister. Its 


22 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. §. 


principles of organization were the same as those of the 
Brownists at Middleburg. Doctrinally the members were 
Calvinists. Services of worship differed from the Anglican 
church out of which its members had come. Prayers were 
not read; hymns were sung without organ accompaniment ; 
the Scripture was read and paraphrased. The sermon was 
expository of biblical teaching and applied to personal 
conduct. To these Pilgrims fell the distinction of making 
the first settlement of independent churchmen in America. 

It is not necessary to distinguish sharply between the 
Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth and the Puritans who 
settled more numerously about Boston as members of the 
Massachusetts Bay colony. The Pilgrims who had come 
from Scrooby by way of Leyden were of a little lower 
social grade than the Puritans of Boston, but they had 
moved farther on the road to independency. The temper 
of the Pilgrims was milder than the temper of the Bay, 
though it may be that they had less provocation. Yet 
both were alike in their condemnation of the old ecclesi- 
astical order, and they came to agree upon a new Con- 
gregational fellowship, even as they blended at length into 
a single colony. 

On the edge of winter in the year 1620 the Mayflower 
landed at Plymouth its single shipload of men, women, 
and children, only a third of whom had come from Leyden. 
Some were friends from England, others were servants, 
still others were on fortune bent, and were out of sympathy 
with the religious purpose of the Pilgrims. Realizing 
this, the controlling element of the new colony in the 
absence of a charter of government had drawn up a com- 
pact which all were required to sign, that they would obey 
the established authority of the colony. Bravely they 
endured the long winter, though half of their number 
succumbed to its hardships. Spring brought reénforce- 
ments, and gradually they gained a foothold on the soil, 
but they were always few in number, apparently little 
more than a forlorn hope in the march upon the wilderness. 


MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENTS 23 


Tenacity of purpose is a well-recognized trait of the Eng- 
lish character, but to that was added the strength of con- 
viction that the Pilgrim enterprise had the approval of 
Heaven. Deprived of their religious leadership in the 
absence of Robinson who had delayed his emigration, the 
colonists relied on Brewster, their church elder, and on 
Bradford, their capable governor. Sunday after Sunday 
they climbed the hill to the log church, which was at once 
meeting-house, fort, and lookout, lived as good neighbors 
and Christians during the week, and acknowledged no 
ecclesiastical authority but their own suffrages. Thus was 
Congregationalism planted in the New World. From 
being a protest and a separation it had become a con- 
structive affirmation and an enduring fellowship. 

Viewed contemporaneously the landing of a few men 
and women on a wintry shore in America might seem in- 
consequential. Judged in the light of history it was an 
event of major significance. It marked the beginning of 
religious independency and an important contribution to 
political democracy in a land that has come to stand dis- 
tinctively for those principles. It gave courage to the 
larger company of Puritans to venture the settlement of 
Massachusetts Bay and to adopt Separatist principles. 
From both of these sources issued a spiritual force that 
had much to do with fashioning the character of the 
American people. Plymouth was not the only colony that 
was founded in those days primarily because of religious 
convictions, but it was the first English-speaking colony 
of the sort to persevere to success, and the qualities that 
stand out in the Pilgrim character have been dominant 
qualities in the American church and state. 

The story of the normal Puritans and their more rad- 
ical variety of Pilgrims makes plain the important part 
that religion played in the settlement of New England. 
It was religious leaders who directed affairs in the infant 
colonies. Bradford wrote of the Pilgrims: “A great hope 
and inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation 


24 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


for propagating and advancing the Gospel of the kingdom 
of Christ, in those remote parts of the world, though 
they should be but even as stepping-stones unto others for 
the performing of so great a work.” Yet it was also the 
poverty and longing for homes in an English land that 
accentuated the religious impulse of those who had expatri- 
ated themselves. 

Material interests were bound up with religious con- 
cerns in the larger Puritan migration to the settlements 
about Massachusetts Bay. The initial attempt was a fish- 
ing station near Cape Ann. A Puritan minister of the 
Anglican church at Dorchester, England, Reverend John 
White, was interested in establishing a permanent colony, 
and with others obtained a grant of land from the Plym- 
outh Company of English merchants. Salem became the 
advance guard, of an extensive Puritan migration, which 
within a few years dotted the shores of Massachusetts Bay 
with settlements that contained several thousand colonists. 
Their enterprise was chartered by the king as the Massa- 
chusetts Bay Company. Presently this Company trans- 
ferred its business organization to America, and made it 
the constitutional basis of colony government. The first 
governor of the colony was John Winthrop. 

Winthrop was a landowner who illustrates the changing 
economic and social conditions at a time when prosperity 
was passing from the landed class to the merchants, Land- 
owners like Winthrop found themselves struggling to keep 
up the social standards of living of their peers. Small 
farmers and artisans, who were landless but sturdy work- 
ers, found their neighbors interested in emigration, and 
with them followed such leaders as Winthrop. In several 
instances whole parishes transferred congregation and 
pastor to a new location in America. Reverend John 
White, the promoter of the colony, who published hig 
Planters Plea at the time of emigration, wrote concerning 
the major purpose of colonization “I should be very uns 
willing to hide anything I think might be fit, to discover 


MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENTS 25 


the uttermost of the intentions of our planters in their 
voyage to New England. . . . As it were absurd to con- 
ceive they have all one mind, so were it more ridiculous to 
imagine that they all have one scope. Necessity may press 
some; novelty draw on others; hopes of gain in time to 
come may prevail with a third sort; but that the most, 
and most sincere and godly part, have the advancement of 
the gospel for their main scope, I am confident.” © 

The exact form that Puritanism was to take in the Bay 
Colony was not sensed at once. The church at Salem was 
organized at first to include all good citizens, like the 
Church of England. Higginson, its minister, exclaimed 
on leaving England: ‘We do not go to New England as 
Separatists from the Church of England, though we can- 
not but separate from the corruptions in it; but we go to 
practice the positive part of church reformation, and 
propagate the gospel in America.” But almost immedi- 
ately the leaders of the church felt that they had not drawn 
the lines of church membership closely enough. Sympa- 
thetic with the principles of Robert Browne, they reor- 
ganized the Salem church on a voluntary basis, accepting 
as members only those who could give evidence of regen- 
eration and were willing to bind themselves by the obli- 
gations of a church covenant. The ministers of the church 
were chosen and reordained by the reorganized church. 
The Plymouth church, recognizing its kinship of faith 
and organization, extended the hand of Congregational 


fellowship. Thus the second Congregational church in 


America came into existence. 

Restriction of church membership to a few who were 
the most spiritually qualified, and a tendency in the 
Puritan settlements to make membership a prerequisite 
to the privileges of citizenship, did not augur a cordial 
welcome to all comers. 

To interpret the Puritan movement as intended to es- 
tablish a free community church would be a mistake. It 


was soon apparent that Puritanism was a straight and 


26 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


narrow way, and that those who could not conform must 
be content to be silent partners in the enterprise or with- 
draw from the colony. As early as 1631 a record of legis- 
lation reads: “To the end the body of commons may be 
preserved of honest and good men, it was ordered and 
agreed that for time to come no man shall be admitted 
to the freedom of this body politic, but such as are mem- 
bers of some of the churches within the limits of the same.” 
Five years later the General Court voted not to permit any 
new churches without the express approval of the magis- 
trates. The leaders were extremely sensitive to any criti- 
cism of their conduct. The colony expelled Roger Wil- 
liams, though a minister, because he criticised their land 
tenure and because he declared the interference of magis- 
trates with religion to be a wrong principle; and the next 
year banished Anne Hutchinson, though a woman of great 
popularity, because she had ventured to question the 
teaching of certain of the colonial ministers. Manage- 
ment of colonial affairs was in the hands of a small oli- 
garchy so influenced by the ministers that the government 
has been called a theocracy. Those who could or would 
qualify for Congregational church membership constituted 
a small minority of the population, yet in 1638 all inhabi- 
tants were taxed for the support of the church as well as 
the commonwealth, and Sunday observance was regulated 
carefully. 

With the growth of the colony more persons came who 
were not in strict sympathy with the policy of the Com- 
pany, but the policy was not changed. Johnson in his 
Wonder-working Providence in 1624 warned all intru- 
ders as to the temper of the possessors of this New England 
Canaan: “All who intend to transport themselves hither, 
may know this is no place of licentious liberty, nor will 
this people suffer any to trample down this Vineyard of 
the Lord, but with diligent execution will cut off from the 
city of the Lord the wicked doers . . . for it is no wrong 
to any man, that a people who have spent their estates, 


MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENTS 27 


many of them, and ventured ‘heir lives for to keep faith 
and a pure conscience, to use by all means that the Word 
of God allows for maintenance and continuance of the 
same.” Hven the Indians were forbidden “to pawaw or 
perform outward worship to their false gods, or to the 
devil, in any part of our jurisdiction, whether they be such 
as dwell here, or shall come hither.” 

Quakers were extremists who went beyond even the 
Congregationalists in their religious independency. They 
rejected an ordained ministry, abandoned the sacraments, 
and gave an inner illumination of the spirit precedence 
over the letter of Scripture. In their enthusiasm for their 
peculiar ideas they tended to become fanatics. They acted 
unconventionally in the Puritan meeting-houses, and some- 
times interrupted the service of worship. Against them 
the “Standing Order” in Massachusetts was especially 
severe, whipping and maiming and banishing them after 
the judicial methods of that time. In spite of great provo- 
cation the authorities resorted to the death penalty only 
after they had exhausted every other remedy to quell the 
disturbers of the peace. The Puritans were fearful that 
such disturbers would focus the attention of the English 
Government on their settlements, and that they would lose 
their large measure of political independence, so dear to 
them but so rigorous toward others. They were few in 
number. Most of their fellow Puritans had emigrated to 
the West Indies rather than to New England, and they 
felt the precariousness of their situation. Their fears 
were justified by King Charles the Second’s message in- 
terfering with religious persecution, and by the revoca- 
tion of the charter of the Company twenty years later. 
The better sense of the people triumphed, as it did later 
in the frenzy over witchcraft. The Quakers became a less 
disturbing element as the colony grew larger, and small 
incidents did not bulk so large, but their sufferings, how- 
ever deserved, serve to show the intolerant disposition of 
a group of people who were more progressive than the rank 


28 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


and file of Englishmen, but who could not, even in a new 
environment, get rid of traditional ways. 

The unlovely side of Puritanism made its adherents 
disliked by their contemporaries. In England they were 
treated after the Stuart restoration as dangerous disturbers 
of the realm, and restrictive laws were passed against 
their religious practices. In the colonies which they con- 
trolled they were disliked for their narrowness and sever- 
ity by those who did not agree with them. In the South, 
where they were in a minority, they were persecuted 
mildly from time to time. 

It is the nobler side of the Puritan nature that has ap- 
pealed to their American descendants and successors. To 
him who appreciates its real significance Plymouth Rock 
on the sandy shore of Massachusetts is a greater shrine 
than the Caaba at Mecca in the sands of Arabia, for it 
marks the triumph of a principle that is basic for social 
construction. The religious devotion of the Arab wor- 
shiper may have been as great, and his superstitious rey- 
erence of the stone far greater than that of the descendant 
of the Pilgrim, but Plymouth Rock is a reminder that, in 
a time when most people built their political and religious 
faith on the shifting sands of a royal will, there were a 
few who rested their unchanging purpose on the sovereign 
will of God, and guided by him ventured to build their 
church and commonwealth. He who feels kinship with 
the Puritan spirit believes that from Plymouth Rock, as 
from the rock that Moses smote at Sinai, has flowed a 
stream of pure religion that has carried its beneficent 
waters through America’s mountain passes and across her 
plains to the distant western sea. 

The critical student modifies such eulogy, and inclines 
to become an iconoclast. The impartial student of his- 
tory must try to put himself in the Puritan’s place in 
England, fare with him in discomfort on a sea journey 
of many weeks, share his loneliness and homesickness, 
his hardships and diseases, even near-starvation. He must 


MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENTS 29 


not overlook his real kindness of heart, his fidelity to con- 
science, his willing sacrifice of personal comfort for what 
he conceived to be God’s will for him. If in his public 
relations the Puritan was unyielding, even disagreeable ; 
if he treated those who differed from him harshly, and 
provoked the scorn and hostility of others by his air of 
cocksureness and studied disapproval; it is necessary to 
remember that he was a child of stern reaction against 
a time-honored system, feeling his way towards a better 
age of nobler principles and convictions, and taught to 
believe that he must view every life and every institution 
in the light of eternity. 

Certain it is that to plant a state and a church on the 
inhospitable frontier of the British nation was no easy 
task. A rude clearing paved the way for a settlement, and 
as each settlement grew it threw off offshoots into the 
neighborhood. So the Pilgrims worked up the coast of the 
Old Colony, and Puritans went inland from Boston to 
Dedham. and Watertown. Every settlement clustered 
about the meeting-house as its center. The meeting-house 
was not only the rallying place of religion, but also the 
political gathering place for the town. Like the first 
houses it was of the rudest description, plain and un- 
adorned and almost square, built of logs and thatched, with 
rude benches for the people and a simple desk for the pul- 
pit. As the dwelling houses improved so did the meeting- 
houses, and by degrees they assumed the form that later 
became known as colonial architecture. There were “chief 
seats in the synagogue’; care was taken to preserve proper 
rank in society. Through the open windows came the 
sweet-scented breath of June days, and through cracks in 
the walls sifted the snows of winter, but the worshipers 
recked not of discomfort. In the coldest weather they 
sat in churches warmed only by foot-stoves and listened 
patiently to long sermons and prayers. Minister and 
teacher took each his turn in sermonizing and expounding 
Scripture Sunday morning and afternoon. A mid-week 


30 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


lecture in the daytime was the precursor of the mid-week 
prayer meeting of a later day. The clergy were men of 
strong purpose, and many of trained ability. Narrow- > 
minded they may have been, but they kept their flock in 
the narrow way of a single purpose. In home and church 
they talked and prayed, and instructed the children in the 
Puritan tenets. In council and assembly they formulated 
church polity and doctrine, and defended their outspoken 
opinions in print with convincing arguments. On the 
officers of the state they exerted so strong an influence 
that government was the expression of the will of a cleri- 
cal aristocracy. ‘To perpetuate a trained ministry Har- 
vard College was founded at Cambridge before the colony 
of Massachusetts Bay was ten years old, the first of a line 
of Puritan institutions that was to extend across the con- 
tinent. 

The Puritan home was only less important than church 
and college to the perpetuation of the religious heritage. 
The family altar was as vital to family prosperity as the 
Lares and Penates of the Roman. Cradock’s letter to 
Governor Endicott of Salem in 1629 gave direction in 
these words: “Our earnest desire is, that you take special 
care in settling those families, that the chief in the family 
(at least some of them) be grounded in religion, whereby 
morning and evening duties may be duly performed, and a 
watchful eye held over all in each family.” The rigid 
observance of Sunday came to be regarded as a necessary 
part of the Puritan system, a protest against the laxity 
of English custom and an acceptance of the Jewish Sab- 
bath as a model for Sunday. The Old Testament fitted 
well the Puritan need for a guide in the midst of enemies. 
Indians were devils in the flesh, and a world of invisible 
demons was no less real. And the Puritan feared God 
even more than the devil. Yet with his fear was a trust 
in God’s wisdom and justice, a confidence in the immuta- 
bility of his purpose, a faith in human destiny, and a joy 
and peace in believing that sweetened and softened the 


MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENTS 31 


stern and bitter aspect of early New England life. Even 
in such an experiment station as Massachusetts Puritanism 
was demonstrating the value of a religion that was based 
less on tradition than on profound personal convictions 
of individual religion. 


III. TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM 


By the year 1635 two regions of America had been 
planted with English colonies. In both of them religion 
‘was a social factor. To Virginia the official, conventional 
religion of the mother country had been transplanted ; few 
settlers protested against it. In Massachusetts the adven- 
ture towards religious independency had begun, only to 
be checked by the old spirit of overhead authority. From 
these two centers, Virginia and Massachusetts, as well as 
from the mother country, the colonies of England ex- 
panded, and with colonial growth went on the expansion 
of religion. 

, Expansion is an historical characteristic of American 
“ religion. With the growth of the colonies churches mul- 
tiplied. With the westward extension of the nation mis- 
sionaries followed the frontier. By and by messengers of 
the Cross went to the other side of the world. Along 
with growth in numbers and expansion of interest came a 
richer content and a broader interpretation of religion. 
The causes of this expansion were various. Migration, 
evangelization, education, all contributed. Men of insight 
and enthusiasm pointed out the way. First of all religion 
had to be freed from the control of tradition, to be liberal- 
ized in its organization, its practices and its beliefs. It 
had to be freed from its dependence on the state. Then 
through experiments in organization it must find a work- 
ing basis for efficient activity, through stern and vigorous 
thinking it must fashion for itself true and helpful ex- 
pressions of its faith, and through vigorous persuasion it 
must enlist and set to work the multitudes which it touched 
in ever widening circles. In these various directions ten- 
32 


TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM 83 


dencies towards liberalism became evident from the early 
days of colonization. 

The first important event was the protest of Roger Wil- 
liams against the functioning of the Massachusetts magis- 
trates in the department of religion, and the subsequent 
settlement of Providence under his leadership. Important 
as was the Massachusetts experiment to be in the process 
of religious emancipation, the rise of insurgency and the 
establishment of Rhode Island as an asylum for the per- 
secuted was even more significant. With all its value the 
Puritanism of the first generation in Massachusetts was 
only a half-way house from the Anglican Establishment 
to American independency in religion and democracy in 
church and state. It is to Williams and his unruly fellow 
citizens that the credit belongs for getting a permanent 
foothold for religious independency in America, a prin- 
ciple that was to extend its influence until in the next 
century the American nation established freedom in re 
ligion as a constitutional right. 

At the head of Narragansett Bay outside the jurisdic 
tion of Massachusetts Roger Williams and the sympa- 
thizers who followed him into the wilderness purchased 
land of the Indians and named their settlement Provi- 
dence in recognition of the Divinity that was rough-hewing 
their destiny. Consistent with his contentions at Boston, 
Williams scrupulously purchased land from the Indians, 
and from the first kept civil and religious matters distinct. 
He and his associates did not handicap the colony with a 
fundamental law that should bind its infant limbs, but by 
general agreement they arranged that the heads of families 
should meet every two weeks, and by majority vote take 
whatever action might seem to be needed by the commu- 
nity. Three other settlements were soon made, one by Mrs. 
Hutchinson and her friends at the mouth of Narragansett 
Bay. Each managed its own affairs by democratic town 
government. Not until 1644 was a colonial government 
inaugurated by permission of the Parliamentary Commit- 


384 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


tee on the Colonies in Great Britain, and even then a refer- 
endum was provided for, giving each town a right to de- 
cide whether or not to accept a law passed by the colonial 
legislature. 

The same democratic freedom was practised in religion. 
There was nothing to prevent Williams and several of his 
followers, when they became convinced of the correctness 
of the Baptist contention that baptism as the door to 
church membership shall be restricted to those who have 
reached years of intelligence and experience, from mutu- 
ally administering the ordinance of baptism by immersion 
and organizing the first Baptist church in America. There 
was nothing to hinder Williams after a few months from 
moving beyond his companions to the point where he 
felt dissatisfied with the manner of his last baptism. With 
perfect freedom of action he withdrew from church fellow- 
ship and called himself a Seeker. This did not prevent his 
continued residence in the colony, his active participation 
in its affairs, and his frequent usefulness as peacemaker 
among those who abused their freedom to quarrel, whether 
over politics or religion. In spite of his vagaries Roger 
Williams was through a long life a valued leader of the 
colony. Among American pioneers he stood almost alone 
in his time for those principles of freedom and democracy 
that are now so ingrained in American thought and life. 
Bancroft’s estimate that Williams for his discovery of 
high moral principles should be classed with Newton and 
Kepler and Copernicus among the modern benefactors of 
mankind is not extravagant. 

The new colony was not liked by its neighbors. Com- 
plete freedom in either religion or politics did not seem to 
most of the Puritans a sufficient principle for constructing 
a system of colonial organization. It was not positive, 
definite, reliable enough to be a corner stone. The his- 
tory of the colonies about Narragansett Bay illustrated 
its ineffectiveness. Men of all creeds were admitted, and 
naturally some were oddly persuaded in their religious 


TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM — 35 


convictions and tended to be unruly. Intoxicated with an 
individual freedom that was almost unique in civil so- 
ciety at that time, they became fanatical, turbulent, and 
even dangerous to the existence of the settlement. But the 
leaders in the colony believed that freedom is a necessary 
preliminary to the growth of vital religion, and maintained 
their policy unflinchingly. The people of the Providence 
colony were clearing the way for achievement in religious 
progress. Henceforth, except later on for Catholics, there 
was to be at least one spot where men and women should 
be free to think, to worship, to organize and to disagree, 
as they believed themselves taught by Scripture or the in- 
ner light. After their rude pioneering it became easier 
for the people of America to foster true liberty, build de- 
nominational organizations on the basis of voluntary rather 
than compulsory association, and help fashion the democ- 
racy that became so conspicuous a characteristic of the 
American nation. 

Massachusetts and Connecticut did not invite the Nar- 
ragansett Bay settlements to join them in defense against 
the Indians, though it was Roger Williams who more than 
once gave friendly warning of approaching danger to 
those colonies. They would have liked to absorb the law- 
less towns on their borders, and might have done so had 
not a charter been secured for the associated towns by John 
Clarke, minister at Newport. This charter affirmed the 
principle of religious liberty in the quaint language that, 
as it was in the hearts of the King’s faithful subjects “‘to 
hold forth a lively experiment” of ‘full liberty in religious 
concernments,” it was his royal pleasure that “no person 
within the said colony at any time hereafter shall be 
molested, punished, disquieted or called in question for 
any differences of opinion in matters of religion,” pro- 
vided they did not use their liberty as a cloak to license 
and lawlessness. For one hundred and eighty years this 
charter served as the constitution of the colony. 

Rhode Island is the first colony where the Baptists ap- 


86 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. 8. 


pear in any appreciable numbers. Now and then the 
Massachusetts records reveal the presence of those who 
were unwilling to have their infant children baptized, only 
to be punished for their obstinacy. Even the first head of 
Harvard College, Henry Dunster, fell into what Mather 
called the errors of Antipedobaptism. But the civil 
government of Massachusetts was so uncivil to such sec- 
taries that most of them went elsewhere. Rhode Island 
offered convenient sanctuary. John Clarke, who obtained 
the charter, was the organizer and pastor of the Baptist 
church in Newport, one of the early towns of the Rhode 
Island colony. His services to the colony place him 
second only to Williams among its pioneers, and his 
services to the Baptists have given him prominence in 
their annals. 

The English-speaking Baptists were a variety of the 
Independents who believed with the founder of Brownism 
in the freedom of the churches to manage their own affairs. 
They were joined with the Congregational groups in 
church membership until in their interpretation of the 
New Testament they decided that it was not proper to 
baptize small children, who could have no conscious ex- 
perience of personal religion. By thus stressing individual 
experience and action they lost the religious solidarity of 
the family, but they conserved the sense of personal re- 
sponsibility. English-speaking Baptists were congrega- 
tional in polity with few exceptions, and most of them were 
Calvinistic in doctrine. 

Another variant from Massachusetts Puritanism was 
Thomas Hooker. He was pastor of a group of emigrants 
who landed in Massachusetts and settled near Boston at 
first, but, dissatisfied with the quarrelsome spirit that 
just then was vexing the colony and desiring room to 
expand, soon trekked across country to the valley of the 
Connecticut River. There they established several vil- 
lages which became the colony of Connecticut. They were 
Puritans, but more liberal than their Massachusetts breth- 


TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM 37 


ren. Hooker, as minister at Hartford and mentor of the 
colony, reminded the people when they were planning 
their government that the foundation of authority lies 
in the free consent of the people, a principle kept in sub- 
ordination by the Massachusetts authorities. The govern- 
ment was duly constituted in 1639 with an instrument of 
government which James Bryce has declared ‘‘the first 
written constitution known to history, creating a govern- 
ment.” The constitution established the authority of the 
state in matters of religion and assessed the entire com- 
munity for the support of the Congregational church, but 
freemen were given suffrage without religious qualifica- 
tion, and a really democratic spirit forestalled trouble- 
some problems of toleration. It was worth much to the 
colony that Hooker was a man of broad opinions and good 
temper, for the New England ministers were revered 
everywhere as expert counsellors in civil as well as ecclesi- 
astical matters, and in Massachusetts their conservatism 
proved the chief hindrance to social and spiritual progress. 
On the foundation laid in 1639 the Connecticut settle 
ments prospered without the tempestuous experiences of 
the less balanced men and women who were attracted to 
Rhode Island, but they fell short of the distinction that 
came to the smaller colony as an oasis for heretics of 
every sort in the desert of contemporary intolerance. 

On Long Island Sound the colony of New Haven was 
founded in 1638 as a Bible Commonwealth on a basis 
more rigid even than that of Massachusetts. Its founders 
had touched at Boston on the way out from England in 
the midst of the Hutchinsonian controversy, and preferred 
to go on farther to make their own settlement. Disagree- 
ments troubled them, and in 1662 the colony was merged 
with Connecticut under an English charter that proved as 
permanently satisfactory as the liberal charter of Rhode 
Island that was granted the next year to the settlers on 
Narragansett Bay. 

In the middle part of the Atlantic seaboard strip, be- 


88 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


tween the royal Episcopal colonies of the South and the 
Puritans of New England, a third group of colonies found 
room. Grants of territory were made to proprietors, who 
were friends or creditors of Charles I or his sons Charles 
and James, and they threw open their lands on liberal 
terms to settlers of various religious persuasions. The 
first of these colonies to be delimited was Maryland. Its 
proprietor, Lord Baltimore, was a Catholic, liberal enough 
to appreciate the importance of a broad religious policy 
for the development of his property. Though his first 
colonizing expedition included two Jesuit missionaries, 
most of the company of emigrants were Protestants, and 
the policy of toleration of all religious convictions was 
adopted. The Catholic clergy zealously propagated their 
faith until they boasted that they had converted most 
of the Protestants and had made a good beginning among 
the Indians, but the colony was not destined to remain 
Catholic. It was not long before an influx of Puritans 
who were expelled from Virginia came across the Poto- 
mac. Presently they obtained control of the Maryland 
government, put the Catholics in subordination, and en- 
tered upon an inexcusable course of political intolerance. 
After a time the colony came under the control ecclesi- 
astically of the Church of England, and lost what spiritual 
vigor it had through the scandalous conduct of a clergy 
without energy or character. 

Before Maryland was assigned to Lord Baltimore the 
Dutch had settled at New Amsterdam. With the transfer 
of the colony to England the Duke of York became its 
proprietor. Naturally the Church of England was estab- 
lished, and all citizens were required to pay taxes for its 
support. The religious policy of general tolerance made 
possible the settlement of various Protestant sects, but 
after the fall of James II, a Catholic king, Catholics were 
treated as undesirable citizens in New York. 

Northern New Jersey has always been connected closely 
with New York. For a time it was part of the Dutch 


TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM = 39 


territory, but it was near enough to New England to feel 
the Puritan influence, and after the transfer of Dutch 
America to England in 1664 scattered Puritan settlements 
were made from New England. New Jersey became a 
proprietary colony under Quaker dominance, and enjoyed 
religious toleration that forecast Penn’s policy in Penn- 
sylvania. Hundreds of Quakers found admittance, and 
organized their system of meetings. As in Maryland and 
New York, a period of proprietorship was followed by a 
change of political status to a royal colony, and the Church 
of England naturally enjoyed special privilege until the 
Revolution. All kinds of Christians were tolerated except 
Roman Catholics. 

Among the proprietary colonies none maintained so 
consistently liberal an attitude towards settlers as the 
Quaker colony of Pennsylvania. The early Friends, or 
Quakers, had moved far along the path of unconvention- 
ality in religion and had come to grief as a consequence, 
but their founder, George Fox, was a spiritually minded 
man, whose influence could be trusted to rub off the sharp 
corners of a militant Quakerism. William Penn, the 
King’s creditor, was another wise and capable leader. 
By the time he had settled his father’s accounts with roy- 
alty and had secured his patent from the King for a large 
area in America, the Friends were steadying down, and 
Pennsylvania was to become a model colony. 

Zeal and determination, when refined by persecution 
and turned into useful channels of activity by wise ad- 
ministration, proved an asset to the new colony. Penn 
was unselfish enough to surrender his personal rights of 
control and progressive enough to plan a democratic gov- 
ernment for the territory over which he was proprietor. 
His fellow Quakers were prompt to avail themselves of 
the opportunity that he offered them in America, and 
with commendable generosity he advertised a welcome to 
oppressed sects on the Continent, promising a free govern- 
ment and liberty to think and worship in their own way, 


40 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


besides plenty of land on easy terms. It is not strange 
that such a combination of good fortune should have at- 
tracted thousands of dissenters in Europe. Among the 
first was a company of Mennonites, a quiet, inoffensive 
Dutch folk. They resembled the Quakers in their detes- 
tation of war and in some of their habits, and were well 
suited to help establish the colony. There were Quakers, 
too, from the Continent, German Dunkards with their 
queer practices of footwashing and trine immersion, and 
Pietists who deplored the decline of spirituality in the 
established church of the Fatherland. Most numerous 
of all were the Palatines who fled from the ravaging armies 
of the French king, Louis XIV, carrying fire and sword 
through the Rhine valley. Most of these refugees ac- 
quired the nickname of Pennsylvania Dutch. Living 
segregated in their own communities, they maintained. 
rigidly their religious convictions and preserved their 
peculiar customs. They farmed their acres thriftily and 
traded among themselves, until they gained a reputation 
second to no region in the country for excellence of char- 
acter and for material prosperity. 

These groups of refugees tended to become self-centered, 
and to perpetuate their folkways from generation to gen- 
eration. Quite different were the Moravians who settled | 
later about Bethlehem. In the spirit of the early Chris- 
tian disciples they looked out upon the world as a mission 
field, even before they had well established themselves in 
Europe, and with more consecration than training went 
willingly to the hardest, most discouraging parts of pagan 
lands. Such a people, though they did not arrive in 
America much before the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, gave a religious tone to their part of the province 
at a time when the Quakers had grown increasingly 
worldly as they waxed prosperous. 

Between the arrival of the minor groups and the later 
Moravians occurred an extensive migration of Lutherans 
and members of the Reformed churches of western Ger- 


TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM 41 


many, not to mention a sprinkling of Catholics. Time 
would fail to tell of the Irish and Welsh Quakers and 
Baptists, the Schwenkfelders, and the Seventh Day Ger- 
man Baptists. There was room for them all. Pennsyl- 
vania was ample in area, possessing a fertile soil and a 
climate not too rigorous, and the colony grew rapidly in 
population and wealth. 

When William Penn outlined his plan of government 
he provided for religious freedom, and when the colony 
was organized the people through their representatives 
were given large powers of self-government. The Great 
Law of 1682 was strict in its rulings against profanity, 
crime, adultery and bigamy. It required all government 
officials to be professing Christians, and all citizens to be 
believers in God, but otherwise it permitted liberty in re- 
ligion. “It is enacted,” ran the law, “that no person now 
or at any time hereafter living in this province, who shall 
confess and acknowledge Almighty God to be the Creator, 
upholder and ruler of the world, and that professeth him 
or herself obliged in conscience to live peaceably and 
justly under the civil government, shall in any wise be 
molested or prejudiced for his or her conscientious per- 
guasion or practice, nor shall he or she at any time be 
compelled to frequent or maintain any religious worship, 
place, or ministry, whatever, contrary to his or her mind, 
but shall freely and fully enjoy his or her Christian lib- 
erty in that respect.” Under this law Pennsylvania was 
a city of refuge for many who were sorely oppressed. 

By the time William Penn was getting his colony 
started and the Duke of York was making his Dutch sub- 
jects docile, the germ of liberalism was developing in 
Massachusetts. The first evidence of it was the adoption 
of the Half-way Covenant. 

From the early reorganization at Salem the churches 
of the Bay Colony had limited full membership to those 
who could show proper spiritual qualifications. This re- 
sulted in far smaller numbers in the churches than the 


# 


49 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. 8. 


number of inhabitants in the colony. Since church mem- 
bership was prerequisite to voting, dissatisfaction was felt 
among certain of the settlers, but that feeling did not 
disturb the church leaders. That which troubled them was 
a lack of religious interest in the young people who had 
been baptized in infancy and were expected to take the 
places of their parents in the privileges and obligations 
of church membership. By 1660 there was danger that 
the churches might perish, unless spiritual regeneration 
should be waived as a qualification necessary for member- 
ship. Then, too, many of the colonists were moving out 
to the advancing frontiers of settlement, depleting the 
forces of the local churches, Land was reserved for relig- 
ious purposes, and new churches were built in the growing 
sections as fast as convenient, but their membership was 
small. Under these circumstances a church synod, meet- 
ing in 1662, set wider ajar the door to church member- 
ship. Those who had been baptized in infancy, if they 
“owned the covenant”? made for them by their parents, 
even though they had no such definite experience of re- 
pentance and faith as had been required of their parents, 
were permitted to present their children for baptism, and 
so a sort of ecclesiastical succession was provided for, but 
the membership of the Covenant did not carry with it par- 
ticipation in the communion or in the suffrage. The 
Half-way Covenant in thus making it easier to qualify 
for church membership helped to fill up the churches, 
but it resulted, as its opponents foresaw, in lowering the 
rigorous standards of Puritanism and in hastening the 
decline of religious interest that had begun already and 
was lamented by the Puritan clergy. The Half-way 
Covenant was abandoned generally about the middle of 
the eighteenth century. 

The acceptance of the Half-way Covenant marks not 
only a weakening of the theocracy but also a decline of 
religious interest in the New England churches. The 
leaders of the first generation were passing away. Hooker 


TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM 43 


had ceased his earthly labors in 1647; two years later Win- 
throp ended his useful life; in 1652 died John Cotton, 
“more lamented, probably, than any other of the fathers 
of New England, as his influence had doubtless contributed 
more than that of any other to settle the details of New 
England institutions.” The earnest men and women who 
had toiled with them in the occupation of the New Eng- 
land Canaan, and who had listened appreciatively to their 
pulpit ministrations and followed their political leader- 
ship were most of them beneath the sod by 1662. Those 
who followed them felt the deteriorating influence which 
accompanies life in a new settlement. Lack of the com- 
forts of life, of adequate educational opportunities, of the . 
refinement of an older civilization, produced a ruder type 
of men in both pulpit and pew. An ambition for exten- 
sive landed possessions led to scattered settlements, to a 
weakening of the old bonds, and to a prolonged influence 
of frontier life. Political questions absorbed attention, 
economic disturbances troubled them, and war with its 
horrors and its demoralization left its mark upon the 
settlements. Not least important of all was the tendency, 
illustrated by the Half-way Covenant, to make certain 
forms take the place of genuine religious experience and 
worship, to be content, as had the churches of Europe, with 
a nominal adherence to the church, a tendency which the 
first colonists would have opposed ardently. All these in- 
fluences produced a religious decline. Disregard of the 
claims of the church, Sabbath-breaking, intemperance, 
licentiousness, and a lack of the homely virtues, became 
gradually conspicuous. They were lamented frequently by 
writers of the last quarter century before 1700. “That 
there is a great decay of the power of religion 
throughout all New England,” wrote Increase Mather, 
“ig lamentably true... . If the begun apostasy 
should proceed as fast the next thirty years, as it 
has done these last, surely it will come to that 
in New England except the gospel itself depart with the 


44 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


order of it that the most conscientious people therein will 
think themselves concerned to gather churches out of 
churches.” Some years earlier Torrey of Weymouth, in 
an election sermon at Boston, said: “There is already a 
great death upon religion, little more left than a name to 
live. . . . As converting work doth cease, so religion doth | 
die away.” Increase Mather said to Harvard students in 
1696: “It is the judgment of very learned men, that, in 
the glorious times promised to the church on earth, Amer- 
wea will be Hell. And although there is a number of the 
elect of God to be born here, I am very afraid, that, in 
process of time, New England will be the wofullest place 
in all America; as some other parts of the world, once fa- 
mous for religion, are now the dolefullest on earth, perfect 
pictures and emblems of Hell, when you see this little 
academy fallen to the ground,—then know it is a terrible 
thing, which God is about to bring upon this land.”’ Such 
doleful statements continued to be heard for fifty years 
in all parts of New England. 

In 1679, when this tendency became plain, the General 
Court at the suggestion of eighteen prominent ministers 
called the Reforming Synod to attempt to find a remedy. 
This body recognized the unfortunate conditions, enume- 
rated thirteen prevalent evils, and prescribed therefor 
twelve remedies to strengthen the ecclesiastical founda- 
tions. A part of the work of the Synod was the prepara- 
tion of a revised confession of faith, which in the form 
of the Savoy Confession of England was adopted at a 
second session of the Reforming Synod in 1680. But 
the medicine prescribed produced only temporary 
effect. 

Contemporaneous with this period and a vigorous de- 
fender of Puritan standards was Reverend Increase 
Mather. Through a long life in church, college, and state 
he tried to stem the tide of religious indifference, much of 
the time seconded by his equally eminent son, Cotton 
Mather. It is not inappropriate to call the period the 


TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM 45 


Age of the Mathers. In his early days Mather was intoler- 
ant of other sects. “I believe,” he said, “that antichrist 
hath not at this day a more probable way to advance his 
kingdom of darkness than by a toleration of all religions 
and persuasions.” But as he ripened with the years his 
mind broadened, until in 1718 with his son Cotton he 
joined in the ordination of a Baptist minister in the town 
of Boston. 

The most serious incident of the period was the loss of 
the first charter of the Bay colony. The numerous com- 
plaints of oppression that had gone to England induced 
the English king, Charles II, to abrogate the charter in 
1684, and with it threatened to fall the laboriously reared 
system of Puritan institutions. In the end there was little 
change, though it required religious toleration in the 
state and freedom of the franchise regardless of church 
membership. For sixty years church and state had been 
almost synonymous. During most of that time the powers 
of government had been invoked to maintain the undis- 
turbed reign of orthodoxy. But other denominations had 
been making headway for some time. Baptists and 
Friends had both secured a foothold in Boston, and with 
the abrogation of the old charter came Episcopacy to vex 
the people of the Old South church until King’s Chapel 
was ready for its use. Equality was not yet, but the last 
decade of the century marks the end of an era. 

It was a changing theology that produced another stage 
in the growth of liberalism. In the eighteenth century 
the New England churches became interested in discus- 
sions about Calvinism. Hitherto their main concern had 
been with questions of church membership, discipline and 
forms of organization. Though they had organized on a 
Congregational basis, they were semi-presbyterian in the 
local churches in Massachusetts, and in Connecticut were 
consociations of churches. They thought better of it after 
a time, but polity entered into their debates and their 
experiments. With doctrine they were only slightly con- 


46 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. 8. 


cerned after the Cambridge Synod had adopted the West- 
minster Confession of Faith in 1648. 

The last years of the seventeenth century saw the 
organization of a church in Boston on a more liberal doc- 
trinal basis. No relation of Christian experience was 
necessary for admission to membership, and the minister 
of the new church had been ordained in England, lest the 
Massachusetts ministers should judge him too liberal to 
receive their approval in an ordination council, Already 
in England there was a distinct drift away from the think- 
ing and the discipline of Geneva, and in its place a cold, 
formal type of religion known as Arminianism was com- 
ing into vogue. The changed atmosphere was felt in the 
circles of ministerial education. Harvard College was so 
progressive in ideas as to make Increase Mather unaccep- 
table as its president, and his son, Cotton, felt Satan ter- 
ribly shaking the churches of Massachusetts. To combat 
this tendency and to arrest the decline of religious interest 
it was necessary to warm the hearts of the people re- 
ligiously and to champion the Calvinistic faith. The 
apostle who assumed that task was Jonathan Edwards. 

Of devout ancestry, born in 1703 and trained at Yale 
College, and influenced by a religious experience that was 
to him very definite, Edwards became while still a young 
man the minister of the church at Northampton in the 
Connecticut river valley, the most influential clerical po- 
sition in Massachusetts outside the Boston district. He 
succeeded his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, who had 
‘ favored admitting all exemplary persons to the Lord’s 
Supper as a means of divine grace, and had so faithfully 
warned them to make their peace with God that an unusual 
interest in religion permeated the town. From this van- 
tage point the youthful minister began preaching heart- 
searching sermons that were so superheated with the fires 
of eternal punishment that in terror for their souls the 
people of the village yielded to his warnings and sought 
admission to membership in the church. The events in 


TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM 47 


Northampton were not isolated occurrences. In many lo- 
calities a similar revival of interest in personal religion 
was producing a new religious atmosphere. 

It was natural that the new interest in religion should 
lead to a new interest in theology, for theology is an at- 
tempt to interpret religious experience. Were the Cal- 
vinistic ideas of the fathers correctly thought out and sub- 
stantiated by God’s Word, or did the newer Arminian 
doctrines that were flourishing in England come nearer 
the truth? Was sovereignty absolute, or was it conditioned 
by the attitude of the human creature? Was Christ “very 
God of very God,” or was the Arian tenet of the inferior- 
ity of the Son rather to be accepted? Arianism had been 
making its way in England as a natural result of un- 
spiritual Arminianism, but was as yet scarcely perceptible 
in America. 

Edwards became the chief of interpreters, as he was the 
prince of revivalists. By philosophical as well as theo- 
logical writings he refuted the propositions of the Armin- 
ian writers in England, whose publications were being 
read in America. Discussing the freedom of the human 
will, he softened the severity of the Calvinistic doctrine 
of election by explaining that man had a natural though 
not a moral ability to repent of his sins, and he was 
therefore responsible to act upon that natural ability. To 
use means of grace without repentance in order to get into 
right relations with God was sinful. Edwards’s champion- 
ship of a slightly modified Calvinism gave him a solid 
reputation with the Congregationalists of New England, 
but his teaching about the misuse of the means of grace 
made him unpopular in the church that had been educated 
in the ideas of Stoddardeanism, and led to his resignation 
as pastor. 

The erstwhile minister of Northampton presently be- 
came a frontier guardian of religion and missionary to 
the Indians at Stockbridge in the Berkshire Hills of west- 
ern Massachusetts. There he had leisure to think and to 


48 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


write. The result was an extended discussion of original 
sin and of the nature of virtue. In these writings Ed- 
wards gained for himself in England as well as in America 
a high reputation as a philosopher, and he vindicated a 
form of Calvinism that proved so acceptable to the Con- 
gregational churches that it became known as the New 
England theology, supplanting the “Old Calvinism” with 
a “New Divinity.” 

Jonathan Edwards holds an unrivaled place among 
the Puritan divines of New England. Combining the 
severe piety of the first generation of the fathers with the 
mystical fervor of an eighteenth century prophet, he per- 
formed for the churches the service of clarifying their 
theology and spiritualizing their religion. He preached 
what was in his heart as well as in his brain. In his own 
experience a sovereign God had gripped his soul and at- 
tached it to himself by bonds that could not be broken. He 
agonized to bring men to an understanding of a similar 
experience. By his evangelistic emphasis he made a 
permanent impression upon his contemporaries. By 
means of his remarkable powers of argumentation he suc- 
ceeded in reéstablishing the Calvinistic faith, which had 
been sorely wounded by the prevalent Arminianism. Dy- 
ing in the prime of life, as he was about to assume the 
presidency of Princeton College, he left behind him an 
inheritance of thought and feeling that profoundly affected 
the succeeding period of New England history. 

Edwards partially humanized Calvinism at the same 
time that he vindicated it, and he was followed by a 
galaxy of lesser theological lights, who contributed their 
addenda to his thought through several generations. But 
none of them can be said to have liberalized Puritan 
orthodoxy. It remained for certain Massachusetts 
preachers to show a decided tendency towards theological 
liberalism. Charles Chauncy opposed the revivalism that 
Edwards had initiated, and controverted his orthodox 
writings with numerous sermons and essays. In opposi-— 


TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM 49 


tion to the prevailing belief that man depended on God for 
his salvation Chauncy urged the necessary and rational 
course of striving to obtain salvation. Believing in the 
authority and infallibility of the Bible, holding to the 
current governmental theory of the atonement, he was in 
most respects a normal Congregationalist, but he antici- 
pated a universal restoration of all men after prolonged 
suffering in hell, and he was typical of not a few who were 
drifting to new moorings without a very definite idea of 
whither they were bound. 

Still more independent was Jonathan Mayhew, pastor 
of the West church in Boston. With lips and pen he 
treated lightly certain of the fundamental doctrines, shock- 
ing the conservative people of the churches. Bellamy, one 
of the doctrinal heirs of Edwards, denouncing’ liberal 
tendencies cried: “Come along to Boston, and see there a 
celebrated doctor of divinity, at the head of a large party! 
He boldly ridicules the doctrine of the Trinity, and de- 
nies the doctrine of justification by faith alone, in the sight 
of all the country, in his book of sermons.” 

Unitarianism was in the making. Liberal thought was 
surging in the veins of restless thinkers in religion, as it 
was in politics in those years before the Revolution. The 
tendency of the times was in his favor. The Revolutionary 
struggle absorbed attention for a few years; then religious 
liberty was to take the field and maintain the same prin- 
ciples in the realm of the spirit as of the State. 

Another phase of the tendency towards liberalism ap- 
pears in the struggle for ecclesiastical equality. It was an 
Old World tradition, accepted unquestioningly by most 
of the American church people, that church and state 
should be in close relation. The church was the mentor 
of the state, and the state the protector of the church. 
Legislatures interested themselves in ecclesiastical affairs, 
and passed laws for the support of the churches. All 
citizens were taxed for the building and maintenance of 
meeting-houses in the local parishes, and for the support 


50 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. §. 


of a minister, whether in Puritan New England or Epis- 
copal Virginia. It was a long time before any exception 
was made for those who belonged to dissenting churches, 
and non-church members could not expect to escape church 
taxes. ‘There was grave dissatisfaction. There was con- 
certed agitation among the Baptists in Massachusetts just 
as the Revolutionary conflict was breaking out. In a 
memorial to the provincial assembly and to the Conti- 
nental Congress they argued the same principle of inde- 
pendence that the colonies were demanding from Great 
Britain. Why should they be taxed for the support of 
another church any more than the American colonies 
should be taxed for the benefit of the mother country? 
The churches in association appointed an agent to collect 
grievances, and if necessary to carry their complaint 
to the highest authorities, but the policy of the colony 
was not altered. 

The constitution that was adopted in 1780 by the inde 
pendent State of Massachusetts preserved the Congrega- 
tional church establishment, but dissenting congregations 
were permitted to divert to their use the contributions of 
their members that were paid to the parish for church 
support. Still there were legal technicalities that vexed 
dissenters for thirty years longer. The Puritan Estab 
lishment did not give up its union with the State until 
1833. 

In Virginia an intolerant policy towards dissenters of 
all sorts was long maintained. Although the Episcopal 
ministers were unpopular, the persons were few whose 
convictions led them to separate from the churches of the 
established faith, but Baptists, Presbyterians and Quakers 
increased in numbers. As in Massachusetts, the approach 
of the Revolution led to a memorializing of the legislature 
of the colony in behalf of the separation of church and 
State, the petitioners expressing the hope that “in this 
enlightened age, and in a land where all of every denomi- 
nation are united in the most strenuous efforts to be free,” 


TENDENCIES TOWARDS LIBERALISM 51 


the legislature would agree to remove “every species of 
religious as well as civil bondage.” Taking the position 
of Roger Williams, they affirmed that governments should 
be restricted to civil functions, that religion was a per- 
sonal affair and one’s duty to his God could only “be di- 
rected by reason and conviction.”’ Remonstrances came 
_ from the other side, pointing out the value and prestige 
of the Establishment, and the colonial assembly spent a 
long time discussing the matter. The immediate result 
was the exemption of dissenters from ecclesiastical taxes, 
and the repeal of all laws enforcing attendance at the 
parish churches. Religious freedom became complete in 
1785, when Thomas Jefferson championed the cause of 
religious equality, declaring that any restriction upon 
perfect religious liberty was infringement upon a natural 
right. Other colonies North and South followed this ex- 
ample of disestablishment, abolished religious qualifica- 
tions for the suffrage, and removed from their statute 
books laws against such obnoxious persons as Catholics, 
which for a time had blotted the fame even of Rhode 
Island’s broad tolerance. Most important of all was the 
adoption of the first clause of the Bill of Rights appended 
to the Constitution of the new nation forbidding the estab- 
lishment of any national church. This broad policy did 
not mean that the nation ceased to be Christian, but it 
established as a fundamental principle the sacred right 
of freedom to think, to speak, and to worship according 
to the impulse of the inner spirit. 


IV. THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM 


THE winning of religious freedom established the prin- 
Jciple of voluntarism in American ecclesiastical circles. 
By the Old World system both the Catholic and Protestant 
churches of Europe had their assured income from lands 
and taxes. Gifts were expected, but they were only inci- 
dental to the larger permanent incomes. In America the 
whole future of religionwas intrusted to the personal 
interest of men and women whose first concern would 
naturally be the support of their own families, and whose 
absorption in winning a competency from the new conti- 
nent might make it seem doubtful if they would give gen- 
erously for so intangible a thing as religion. 

Voluntarism proved a stimulus to church activity. It 
is a healthy principle that a church must exert itself in 
order to live, and endowments and establishments fre- 
quently cut the nerve of generosity. Voluntarism was a 
‘principle in harmony with the sturdy, self-reliant char- 
.acter of colonists inured to hardship and depending on 
their own resources. It was in accord with the genius 
of America, and no other principle could have endured in 
American churches. 

To Europeans accustomed to look to Government for 
every needed church equipment, it seemed remarkable 
that church members, and even those outside of the 
churches, should so generously contribute to the building 
of meeting-houses, should pay willingly the salaries of the 
ministers, should found and endow academies and col- 
leges, should raise sums of money to send missionaries to 
the frontiers of their own land and to lands on the other 
side of the world which they had never seen, and should 

52 


THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM 53 


cooperate heartily both with money and effort in various 
kinds of philanthropy. What seemed so strange became 
a matter of course to Americans, and in spite of the rapid 
growth of population and the expansion of the country 
westward the churches kept pace with the need. 

Voluntarism is not merely a matter of church support. 
It was almost as novel a principle in regard to membership . 
in the churches. With an established church, as in Eng- 
land, it was the natural expectation that membership 
would be coextensive with citizenship. From the begin- 
ning it was not so in the most virile American colonies, 
and it became an established principle among American 
Protestants that religion was a personal matter, and that 
the responsibilities of church membership should be as- 
sumed only after a voluntary act of initiation into such 
membership. Where baptism had been administered in 
infancy the child grown to adolescence took upon himself 
the obligations assumed by others, owning the covenant 
that had been made for him or accepting confirmation at 
the hands of a bishop, and thus publicly acknowledged 
his purpose and his church relation. Persons not thus 
baptized decided for themselves when, if at all, they 
would apply for baptism and church membership. 

The working out of the voluntary principle has demon- 
strated its sufficiency. A heartfelt loyalty to the church 
of one’s choice, a willingness to serve in the ecclesiastical 
ranks that has made great lay movements possible, a gen- 
erosity unparalleled in church history, are among the 
results that the principle has wrought. Churches are 
tempted sometimes to resort to strong measures to obtain 
greatly needed funds, but it is not necessary to demand 
tithes or to lay assessments. The missionary enterprise 
of evangelical Christians in this country is a stupendous 
undertaking, when it is realized that the societies that 
direct it are voluntary, that its directing boards are un- 
paid, and that its resources are the generous hearts of its 
constituents. Greater sums are devoted to the support of 


54 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


local churches, but they too are the voluntary gifts of 
the members, yet for generations ministers have labored, 
Sunday school teachers have instructed, and workers have 
toiled for little or nothing because of their love of the 
church or of their particular enterprise. 

Voluntarism is so obvious a principle, as it is exhibited 
in American churches, that its significance is overlooked, 
but it is one of the revolutionary principles adopted by 
modern ecclesiastical organizations. It does not work 
easily among people brought up to the state church sys- 
tem, as in the case of foreign-speaking churches gathered 
among converts to Protestantism who have migrated 
hither. It requires training in stewardship even among 
those who have been reared to accept it in principle. But 
it is the only principle that agrees with a republican goy- 
ernment, with an intelligent citizenry, and with religious 
liberty in faith and organization. For these reasons 
it seems certain to endure. 

A second consequence of emancipation was democracy 
in the churches. Democracy has become so familiar in 
church as in state that it is not easy to realize how revo- 
lutionary it was as compared with the European practice 
to give the management of ecclesiastical affairs to the 
people. Throughout the Middle Ages the people had | 
nothing to say about the conduct of church matters. That 
belonged to a separate class of ordained clergy. In the 
Protestant countries of Europe the hold of the clergy re- 
mained strong. Aristocratic control by bishop or pres- 
byter was the order in the state churches of Holland, Scan- 
dinavia, England, or Scotland. Congregationalism had 
hardly been conceived when the seventeenth century 
opened. In Massachusetts the Congregational ministers 
presumed to dominate the local congregation, and even 
to direct the action of the colonial legislature, when pos- 
sible, and in Connecticut they went so far as to organize a 
semi-presbyterian consociation of churches, but the trend 
of the times was in favor of the laity sharing in ecclesi- 


THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM 55 


astical legislation and administration. In the colonial 
South the clergy were dependent upon their vestrymen, 
so that local control of ecclesiastical affairs was in the 
hands of laymen. In the North in Congregational and 
Baptist churches one man had as good a right to speak and 
vote and hold office as another, and ministers gradually 
lost their masterfulness. In both denominations the right 
of the local churches was guarded jealously, and the or- ' 
ganization of district and national assemblies was long 
delayed. Later on new groups, like the Campbellites, or- 
ganized themselves on a voluntary basis and refused to 
accept the authority of any person or clerical body that 
was not responsible to the people. In such bodies as the 
Episcopal Convention or the Methodist Conference, organ- 
ized as soon as circumstances warranted, there was larger 
measure of superintendence, but even there the people were 
the court of last resort, and the principle of democracy 
grew in favor. As time went on the members of the 
churches demanded full lay representation in the ecclesi- 
astical assemblies, and obtained the privilege of speaking 
and voting and holding office. 

Democracy is practised with as keen a relish in church 
circles as in the old New England town meetings, so ex- 
pert a school in the training of a democratic people. It 
is in America that laymen in the churches have developed 
their movements, even among the Catholics, and in the 
most democratic groups women have enjoyed equal rights. 
with men in most instances, and even have found their 
way into pulpits as well as on governing boards. The 
result has been that every variety of Protestant religious 
organization that has counted for much in this country, no 
matter what its polity or ecclesiastical tradition, is organ- 
ized democratically. Authority may be delegated for 
various purposes, but the ultimate control rests with the 
individual members of the churches. 

Democracy, like voluntarism, is in narmony with the 
government and social life of the people in America, but 


56 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


it does not agree with the ecclesiastical traditions that 
have come down from the European past, and since the 
church is a conservative institution it would not have been 
strange if there had been more of aristocratic government 
in the American churches. But as the pure democracy 
of the town. meeting-and the representative democracy 
of the colonial assembly fostered.-political liberty, and in 
turn were made permanently possible by the full realiza- 
tion of political liberty, so the pure and representative 
democracies of the.Protestant churches stimulated re- 
ligious liberty and were a permanent consequence of that 
liberty. 

A third consequence of religious liberty was_denomina- 
tionalism. Though not undeveloped elsewhere, and tend- 
ing to perpetuate the distinctive features of its European 
origins, it is as characteristic an American product as 
voluntarism. Condemned as denominationalism has been 
for its two hundred varieties of churches, for its rivalries 
and jealousies, its proselyting and overchurching, its spirit 
of bigotry and its perpetuation of outgrown issues, de- 
nominationalism must be recognized as the inevitable out- 
come of the principle that every person has a right to 
choose his religious affiliations, and that like seeks like 
according to the law of social psychology. Denomination- 
alism was impossible when uniformity was enforced, as 
it was generally until the days of American settlement. 
It grew rapidly in the fertile soil of religious indepen- 
dency. Individualism has always been conspicuous as an 
American trait. It strengthened with the process of the 
disintegration of old institutions consequent upon eman- 
cipation from the old tyrannies. It has produced denomi- 
national variety, and has split up denominations into 
smaller units, with independent organization, though with 
a family likeness. But there is a point beyond which the 
disintegration of religious organization does not go. 
Seekers, because they could not find any body of Chris- 
tians that suited their ideas, might separate from all de- 


THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM = 57% 


nominations, but the normal person prefers companion- 
ship in religion, and those who have similar convictions 
and purposes have united in religious as in political and 
social groups. In the absence of political restraint a 
single local church learned to know others of its sort, and 
to value mutual counsel and codperation. Loosely organ- 
ized bodies were slow to yield to the centripetal forces, 
but the values that denominationalism exhibited in the 
experiences of years made it the inevitable consequence. 
It was the fellowship and counsel of the other churches 
that made single bodies unite in association or conference. 
Under the impulse of the missionary passion they organ- 
ized their voluntary societies, first for domestic and then 
for foreign missions, and thus learned the value of co- 
operation for a common purpose. 

A denomination like the Episcopalian. nad an in- 
herited tradition and a closely knit organization that gave 
it a relatively keen appreciation of the denomination; the 
denominational consciousness was relatively easy of at- 
tainment by the Presbyterians; but others came to de- 
nominational consciousness only when a common enter- 
prise like foreign missions awoke them to their likemind- 
edness. Denominationalism in America has resembled 
nationalism. Reluctance to accept overhead authority 
made the community and state hold on to their inde 
pendence as long as possible, but the larger interests of the 
people as a whole made closer association and organization 
necessary. As in the nation so in the denomination a 
spirit of loyalty developed that strengthened the bonds of 
the churches of a given name, while it weakened inter- 
denominational codperation. 

The denominational emphasis was costly. It estab- 
lished too many churches in a limited territory and made 
no provision at all for the needs of the people in certain 
neighborhoods. It produced envy, jealousy, unhealthy 
rivalry. It reacted unfavorably upon public opinion out- 
side the churches. But it was the product of the spirit 


58 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


of the times, with its emphasis upon independence and 
group rights. It was particularly strong on the frontier, 
where its effects were unfortunate. Instead of a multitude 
of weak Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian enterprises, 
there might have been one or two strong, evangelical 
churches, located strategically in each community, but 
it required long experience to make that plain. 

These three consequences of religious liberty—volun- 
tarism, democracy, and denominationalism—are signifi- 
cant characteristics of American Christianity. ‘They are 
not exclusively American products, but they have had 
fullest opportunity for experimentation and fullest vin- 
dication here, where religion is most free and has un- 
limited scope. They are not likely to cease to function, 
for they are in harmony with the American spirit. That 
they will be supplemented on occasion, as, for example, 
by interdenominational conferences, there is every rea- 
son to expect.. That they require a high degree of educa- 
tion in the rank and file and skilled leadership, if the 
churches are to be efficient, is unquestionable. but, 
whether for good or ill, they are the outstanding elements 
in the American ecclesiastical system. 

One other consequence of religious freedom and equal- 
ity was evangelism. Since an individual did not enter — 
automatically into church membership under a voluntary 
system, it was necessary to persuade him to qualify for 
admittance. The pulpit therefore appealed to those 
who had not made profession of religion, and at certain 
seasons made special effort for a religious revival. In 
the Protestant, especially the Puritan, churches of that 
time the pulpit was the preacher’s throne. In gown and 
bands the Puritan preacher stood in his lofty eyrie 
perched above the heads of the people, and with grave 
dignity spoke with an authority that was seldom dis- 
puted. In revival services the preacher came nearer to 
the level of his audience, sometimes spoke in the open 


air after the fashion of Wesley and Whitefield, the Eng- 


THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM 59 


lish revivalists, and drove home his message with pun- 
gency. 

Frontier evangelism became necessary with the advance . 
of settlement. From the early years of colonization new 
territory was opened continually. One of the strong in- 
ducements to colonization was the opportunity to occupy 
larger areas of land than was possible at home, and as 
the lands contiguous to the villages were taken up settlers 
moved out upon unused acres that stretched away into the 
woods and over the hills, even if they required clearing 
and the erection of buildings. The Indians were a de- 
terrent, but in the intervals of peace the people ventured 
out, and, after King Philip’s War in New England and 
the seventeenth century massacres in Virginia had passed, 
the settlers moved farther afield and planted an increasing 
number of small colonies up to the falls line of the rivers. 

To these infant settlements religion found its way. Its 
natural hold upon the expanding territory was tenuous, 
but always a few persons were religiously minded, and 
new churches were organized with the encouragement of 
the older organizations wherever it seemed expedient. 
For a time land was granted only to settlers of satisfac- 
tory respectability and character, but in the long run the 
demand for land was too strong for the maintenance of 
restrictions. In New England the influence of the Puri- 
tans lingered with their descendants, yet it was inevitable 
that physical weariness and mental absorption in the la- 
borious task of carving estates out of the wilderness, to- 
gether with the rude customs and moral laxity that are 
always characteristic of frontier settlements, should 
weaken the appeal of religion. Even where there were 
churches, their influence was less than that of the older 
settlements. In the South, where meeting-houses were 
less easy of access and the character of the clergy was less 
religious, the interest in religion was slight. In an offi- 
cial letter a Virginia governor wrote to the British Lords 
of Trade in 1717 that the frontier foik were “so little 


60 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


concerned about religion that the children of many of 
the inhabitants of those frontier settlements are twenty, 
and some thirty years of age before they are baptized, and 
some not at all.” The Carolina frontier attracted the 
more shiftless people of Virginia, and they were usually 
irreligious and lawless. Sometimes they were guilty of 
getting the Indians drunk and then robbing them, thus 
arousing the ire of the natives against all white men. 
With advancing settlement this worthless element drifted 
farther west out of the reach of ministers and churches. 

It was in the newer settlements of the seaboard colo- 
nies that the revival of religion had its fittest setting, but. 
the older towns shared in the Great. Awakening that. fol- 
lowed the outbreak of religious intensity at Northampton 
under the preaching of Jonathan Edwards. The prince 
of evangelists of that period was George Whitefield of 
England. His methods did not suit the Anglican Church 
in which he was reared, and like John Wesley he went 
his own independent way. Convinced of a personal re- 
ligious experience that came to him quite apart from eccle- 
siastical influence, he did not hesitate to carry his gospel 
to the common people in the fields, when he was not. wel- 
come in the churches. He gave a great impulse to Method- 
ism, though he did not agree with Wesley in theology. 
Together they introduced a vital religion to the working 
people, which Puritanism had failed to do, and helped 
to save England from the excesses which eventuated in 
the Revolution in France. 

Whitefield crossed the Atlantic and used his remark- 
able oratorical abilities in a preaching tour along the 
coast. ‘Ihe magnetism of his words and his presence drew 
immense audiences to hear him wherever he went, 
Crowded out of the meeting-houses, at first because they 
were too small and later because many church leaders 
thought he was too strenuous and sensational, he preached 
out of doors. People-rode many miles across country to 
hear him, leaving the plow in the furrow, as minute 


THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM 61 


men went to war in the Revolution... The excitement that 
attended the preaching of Edwards was repeated wherever 
Whitefield went. A later journey was less successful, and 
the evangelist felt himself opposed by ministers and 
churches who did not like his kind of religion. 

Whitefield was succeeded by Tennent and Davenport, 
men of the Middle colonies, who were sometimes inju- 
dicious in their criticisms of their opponents. In some 
sections an unfavorable reaction set in. So unrelenting 
was the opposition on the part of some churches that a 
division occurred in the ecclesiastical ranks. ‘New 
Light’? sympathizers with the revivalists seceded and 
organized Separatist churches in Connecticut and Massa- 
chusetts, especially in the newer settlements, or joined the 
Baptists who were more evangelistic than the Congrega- 
tionalists and Presbyterians. These groups became centers 
of religious ferment, and in several instances their church 
associations became agencies for the support of itinerant 
evangelists. In the neighborhood of Philadelphia William 
Tennent founded the “Log College’ for the training of 
evangelists, men who would not otherwise be at all accep- 
table to Presbyterians,a body. that had strong scruples 
against an uneducated ministry. That school became a 
source of supply for religious exhorters over a large area 
in the Middle and Southern colonies. One of the fruits 
of the revival period was Princeton College, founded by 
the progressive Presbyterians in 1746 for high grade 
ministerial education. 

Pastors of parish churches felt an obligation to itinerate 
at intervals among the remote. settlements. As earlier 
evangelists in colonial days had gone among the Indians 
of Massachusetts from Martha’s Vineyard to the Berk- 
shire Hills, and had gathered them into Christian villages 
and churches, so in the last half of the eighteenth century 
zealous preachers visited Cape Cod, pushed up into the 
granite hills of New Hampshire, and travelled along the 
inlets and the rocky shore of Maine. Such men went 


62 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


at their own charges, rode their own horses, and lodged 
as hospitality offered. Certain New Light evangelists 
from New England took the long journey to the South, 
planted revivalist churches and set the people on fire. 
When the demands became greater than could be met by 
temporary absences of settled ministers, associations of. 
churches assumed the responsibility and sent out evan- 
gelists for periods of three months or longer, from New 
England to the pioneer settlers and Indians of New York 
and the Canadian border, and even to the South from 
Pennsylvania. These men endured hardships on starva- 
tion salaries because of their religious devotion. 

The Revolutionary war and the French Revolution with — 
its hostility to organized religion had an unfortunate 
reaction on the religious interest of the American people. 
Experience proved that war is never productive of spiri- 
tual fervor. During the progress of the Revolution the 
war furnished a common topic of conversation during 
the week, and supplied the theme of many a pulpit dis- 
course on Sunday. It proved the patriotism of most. of 
the ministers and churches, but it did not stimulate that 
feeling of good will towards God and man that is so 
essential an element in vital religion. From France and 
from the writings of such a patriot as Thomas Paine, in- 
fluences productive of unbelief in religion affected young 
men in the colleges, and even. some of the statesmen in 
the country. Lyman Beecher, a student at Yale College 
in the closing years of the century, testified to the lack of 
religious interest there and against the irreligious tendency 
President Timothy Dwight found it desirable to champion 
the fundamentals of religion in the classroom. Ecclesias- 
tical apologists disputed with local infidels at the popular 
village forums and local preachers denounced infidelity 
from their pulpits, but intellectual arguments seldom 
converted an unbeliever to a genuine faith. By the end 
of the century a need of vigorous constructive preaching 
was apparent everywhere. | 


THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM 63 


The popular revival of religion that was noticeable after 
the turn of the century soon gave evidence of the impor: 
tance of evangelism, and widespread revivals recurred 
intermittently to the Civil War. In the older settlements 
local ministers aroused the people without the help of 
peripatetic revivalists. Meeting-houses were thronged 
by attentive audiences. The appeal of the minister was 
less sensational than it had been sixty years earlier. His 
argument was built around the idea.of.the exceeding sin- 
fulness of man and his need of a soul salvation that could 
be obtained only through faith in the efficient sacrifice 
of Jesus Christ on the cross. His effort was to arouse 
the will of the individual and so bring him to a point 
where he would confess his sins and find a joyful hope of 
forgiveness, when he would be received on confession of 
faith into church membership. 

The popular movement began among the Baptists, who 
were most insistent on a transforming religious experi- 
ence. It was at this period that their preachers made such 
an impression upon the people of the South, whites and 
blacks alike, that their type of religion has been domi- 
nant in that region ever since. ‘The Baptists were ably 
seconded by the Methodists, who in England had_per- 
petuated the warm Arminian theology and fervent preach- 
ing of John Wesley, and who at the time of the Revolu- 
tion commenced in free America a movement that ad- 
vanced with little interruption until the Methodists be- 
came the most successful exponents of a vigorous, efficient 
religion. At their first coming they were not received 
cordially in the older settlements, and they resorted to 
private houses where they gathered a few sympathizers. 
In most cases they organized_classes of the few who ac- 
cepted their message, and then the itinerant. preachers 
passed on to carry their gospel to other villages. Their 
first chapels were built on the outskirts of the towns. The 
growth of Methodism at first was slow but steady. Al- 
ways some persons thirsted for a religious faith and 


64 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


experience that the Episcopal or Congregational church 
did not give, or who were repelled by the hard Calvinism 
of the Presbyterians or Baptists,.or by the insistence of 
the latter on immersion. as necessary to admission into 
the church. By the end of the century Methodism had _ 
won a recognized place even in the older parts of the 
country. 

In the newer portions of the South and West revivals 
were of a more emotional type. Evangelism had its most 
sweeping successes in the backwoods settlements where 
fervent, if ignorant, preachers easily aroused excitement 
among people who had little to divert them and who were 
easily stirred to an. interest. in a religion that had con- 
trolled their ancestors. The people of the interior were 
largely Scotch-Irish in origin. They themselves or their 
immediate ancestors had lived in the north of Ireland 
where Scotch people had settled as colonists, and had 
prospered until economic misfortune and religious perse- 
cution had driven thousands of families overseas. Some 
of them had attempted to find homes in New England, 
but the Congregationalists did not like their Presbyteri- 
anism and were not cordial. Others of them found places 
of settlement in New York and New Jersey. Still others 
went to Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. By far_ 
the largest numbers found their way into the interior of 
Pennsylvania and flooded the back country, flowing south 
in a steady stream between the Blue Ridge and the Alle- 
ghanies. This race that had brought Irish moor and fen 
under cultivation, and had built up manufacturing indus- 
tries in the northern towns that rivaled those of manufac- 
turers in England, was destined to prove itself of superior 
value as an element in the complex of races that was to 
build America, but for a time the Scotch-Irish created an 
immigrant problem. They did not harmonize with the 
tidewater aristocracy of the lower counties of the South. 
Political disturbances occurred. They were useful for a 
time as a buffer against the Indians, and during the 


THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM = 65 


Revolution they were a tower of strength to the new 
republic, but they were an independent people, and the 
frontier intensified their natural characteristics. In_re-~ 
ligion they were strong in doctrines, but less.exact in-their 
conduct under frontier conditions. Their psychology has 
survived in the mountain whites of the mountain pockets 
of the Southland. They did not fit in with the Episco- 
palians of the lower counties, and in the end they had a 
prominent part in the disestablishment of the Anglican 
Church and in the adoption of the principle of religious 
freedom. They inherited Scotch Presbyterianism, but 
their uncouth preachers were not liked by the older, better 
trained Presbyterian clergy, and the time came when the 
revivalist sympathizers withdrew from the main body and 
organized their Cumberland Presbytery, as New Light 
Congregationalists in New England became Separatists. 
Like other frontier folk, the Scotch-Irish needed religious 
inspiration and leadership, and they received it from the 
camp meeting evangelist. 

The camp meeting affords a fruitful study in the psy- 
chology of religion; it is one of the most interesting ex- 
amples of the vagaries of the social mind. In spite of its 
extravagances it had profound effects religiously and 
morally. The Cane Ridge camp meeting is the best ex- 
ample of many assemblies in the new Southwest. In a 
clearing near the Cane Ridge meeting-house an immense 
tent was spread and a platform erected, and the meeting 
began. The people, glad of any event that would bring 
them together, and with religious natures intense and 
unrestrained, gathered in large numbers and yielded 
readily to the influence of the preacher. Homes and set- 
tlements were deserted, fields were left unworked, in vehi- 
cles of every sort and on horseback they came from all 
directions and camped for days around the tent. Con- 
tinuous excitement prevailed. There was hardly time 
to eat or sleep. The meetings continued often all night. 
The grove lighted with camp fires, and the songs and 


66 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


groans of sinners and saints, created a weird scene, and 
made realistic the pictured scenes of the other world and 
the judgment. Naturally under the continued strain of 
excitement weak nerves gave way and muscular contor- 
tions exhibited themselves. Men and women rolled on 
the ground, foamed at the mouth, jerked their heads, arms, 
and legs, or even went mad with fear. With the prevail- 
ing belief in the deadliness of sin and the horrors of hell, 
the exhorters had weapons as powerful with their hearers 
as the anathema and excommunication of the Roman 
Catholic church of the Middle Ages. It required a brave 
mind and unusual strength of will to resist the tide of 
emotion that swept over the thousands of people camping 
at Cane Ridge, and few resisted successfully. Camp 
meetings of this popular sort were common in the newer 
parts of the country; like political rallies they filled a 
social need in spite of their crudities. 

Evangelism of the saner type proved so successful as a 
means of church growth that ministers of the popular 
denominations employed evangelistic methods, and de- 
pended from time to time on religious spellbinders to stir 
the impulses of the people. Intermittent revivals of na- 
tional scope continued up to the Civil War. Certain 
evangelists, like Finney and Knapp, and later Moody, 
gained a national reputation. They were especially suc- 
cessful at times of public discouragement and distress, 
such as happened during the hard times of industrial de- 
pression. ‘They drew the people in masses to their meet- 
ings, and often numbered their converts by the thou- 
sand. Such intensification of the religious impulse had 
its reaction with many in a loss of interest after a few 
months, and it would require renewed effort at the next 
revival period to stir the “‘backsliders,” but many were 
won to a permanent allegiance to the churches, and re- 
mained steady in their purpose and support. 

Even the Roman Catholics in time adopted the revival 
method in their preaching missions. Parish priests made 


THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM = 67 


the preliminary preparations, and then two or more 
fathers of a special order, gifted in the art of persuasion, 
visited the parish church and held a series of meetings 
for several weeks with frequent sermons and practical 
talks, closing with the solemn reconsecration of the con- 
eregation. ‘These missions proved effective in keeping the 
people tuned to their religion, and resulted frequently in 
attracting individual Protestants into the Catholic church. 

Evangelism on the advancing frontier soon developed 
into what is known technically as home or domestic mis- 
sions, and it stimulated an interest in the English mis- 
sionary enterprises that had been undertaken in India and 
the Pacific Islands, until the American churches had 
definitely entered upon an organized foreign mission 
enterprise of their own. The Evangelical Awakening of 
the early nineteenth century broadened the minds of the 
rapidly growing churches. They began to understand 
something of the obligations of Christian people. They 
felt a new interest in the unfortunate and oppressed, and 
before long were experimenting in philanthropy. They 
saw the necessity of more and better schools for the 
training of ministers and of their own young people, 
and presently they conceived new ways of religious edu- 
cation through the Sunday School. All these were conse- 
quences of an active interest in a free, voluntary re- 
ligious organization, not outwardly imposed, but valued 
the more because it was popularly sustained. The broad- 
ening out of religion makes the nineteenth century signifi- 
cant in the history of the American churches. 

Still another consequence of freedom was the develop- 
ment of religious organization. In the early part of the 
nineteenth century a national consciousness grew out 
of the merging of provincial interests in a national gov- 
ernment. Centrifugal forces pulled sections apart at 
times until the issue between nationalism and sectionalism 
was fought out in the Civil War, but after President 
Washington’s administration there was a new sense of 


68 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


the value of the nation and a feeling of loyalty to it. 
Similarly a denominational consciousness was growing 
among religious people with the increasing settlement of 
the country, the easier intercommunication that followed, 
and the expanding interests that so many people held in 
common. ‘The religious denominations were not free 
from differences of personal opinion, group animosities, 
and the influence of sectional feeling in the nation, but 
local churches were associating themselves for fellowship 
and active effort. 

About the time of the organization of national govern- 
ment several of the prominent religious bodies completed 
a national organization. The severance of America from 
England compelled a reorganization of the Episcopal 
Church, and after some difficulty it was able to secure 
properly consecrated American bishops. The Methodist 
Church, Episcopacy’s thriving daughter, organized itself 
episcopally for its American career. The Presbyterians, 
who had brought presbyteries into existence, now com- 
pleted their organization with a General Assembly. All 
these were accomplished within the space of five years 
(1784-9). The Catholic Church in America received its 
first bishop in the same period. | 

Congregationalists and Baptists were local in their 
organization. However strict the Puritan governments 
might be in maintaining ecclesiastical standards in colo- 
nial New England, Congregationalists rejected both 
episcopacy and presbytery, and after experimenting with 
advisory synods, abandoned the idea even of associations 
of churches. 

Following the example of the London Missionary So- 
ciety of England, Congregationalists and Presbyterians 
joined in a “Plan of Union” for missionary purposes in 
1801, but no Congregational church was bound by it, and 
after the experience of a few decades the two denomina- 
tions went their several ways. Yet the spirit of inde- 
pendence, strengthened by the victory of the principle 


THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM 69 


of voluntarism, which might naturally be expected to pre- 
vent any close association of churches, gave way before 
the growing conviction that the churches had a common 
missionary task. Both Congregationalists and Baptists 
organized voluntary societies to extend evangelistic enter- 
prises among the settlements, and in the second decade 
of the new century both denominations organized for 
foreign missions. 

It could not be foreseen at that date that foreign mis- 
sions would become one of the greatest civilizing forces 
of. modern.times; that in India and on its outlying 
frontiers hundreds of thousands of converts to Chris- 
tianity would be gathered into churches, and the churches 
of different denominations within a century would be 
leading the Christian world towards ecclesiastical. fed- 
eration and unity; that the closed doors of China and 
Japan would be opened to the teacher and the physician, 
and that Christian schools and churches would weaken 
the hold of Buddhism and Shintoism upon the Orientals; 
that Africa and the islands of the Pacific would: sur- 
render their savagery and paganism, and become trans- 
formed here and there into civilized regions; and that 
within a century the missionary leaders would be talk- 
ing about evangelizing the whole world within a genera- 
tion. What the church people of those days saw was the 
picture of millions of heathen perishing eternally without 
a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, and in pity they 
were willing to give their money and their lives to the 
work of rescue. 

The conception of religion of that day was narrow. 
Christianity was the only religion that was true; all 
others should be destroyed. Divine grace had sent Christ 
into the world, had ordained that a few should put faith 
in him as a Savior of their souls, but that the large 
majority would perish in their sins. The great task of 
the church was to bring saving faith to those whom God 
should call. Preaching was the means of appeal to indi- 


70 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


viduals and congregations, and churches provided and 
maintained the preachers. The sermon was the chief 
factor in all the attempts at evangelizing the people of 
the American frontier and of the foreign mission areas, 
and as soon as the people gave evidence of an experi- 
ence of saving grace in their hearts they were admitted 
to church membership. In this way there was a double 
gain, to the individuals and to the churches. 

When the interest of the churches had broadened to 
include foreign missions among their activities, they 
had not gone beyond the evangelizing emphasis. But 
circumstances forced upon the missionaries and the sus- 
taining boards a larger task. It did not require much 
experience to prove that preaching and gathering con- 
verts into churches was only the initial step in a process 
of Christian culture. On the foreign mission fields of 
the Kast Christian converts must be segregated from their 
pagan neighbors and taught how to live sane, moral lives, 
and their children must be provided with Christian 
schools that they might be brought into the Christian 
faith and prepared for Christian service. Some of them 
must be trained as Christian pastors, teachers and work- 
ers, so that institutions of higher grade were provided. 
Physically wretched, the people needed physicians and 
hospitals. Orphaned or uncared for children needed 
rearing in Christian homes. Ignorant of the rudiments 
of modern industry or agriculture, and even of decent 
home life, the masses of the people needed patient instruc- 
tion from those who shared in a higher civilization. Be- 
cause of these needs the missionary enterprise broadened 
to include the applications of Christianity to Eastern 
life. Vigorous opposition to these larger conceptions of 
Christian obligation was felt by the missionary societies. 
Prominent among such opponents were the Primitive 
Baptists of the Southwest. Only a moderate proportion 
of the churches of the various denominations took an ac- 
tive interest in missions. The societies were. merely volun- 


THE CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM 71 


tary associations of individuals who were interested 
enough to contribute to missionary support. Yet in spite 
of some opposition and more indifference American 
churches contributed to foreign missions with increasing 
generosity and intelligence, and the missionary enterprise 
became a factor of great importance in denominational 
organization. 


V. RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 


THE spur that drove the missionary overseas sent his 
fellow out definitely upon the advancing frontier of 
America. By the frontier is meant the edge of settlement 
as emigration moved west from the Atlantic seaboard. It 


was continually shifting, not always with regularity, but 
always with motion forward. Before the Revolution was - 
over migration had crossed the Appalachian ridge and ~ 
established a new frontier in Kentucky and Tennessee, 


and shortly afterward in southern Ohio along the Ohio 
River. This new frontier had been advanced beyond the 
Mississippi by 1830, and three and a half million per- 
sons were living beyond the Alleghanies. After that the 
advance was over the prairies instead of through the 
forests. 

This migration to the West was chiefly Southern, much 
of it from the Southern highlands. The plantation sys- 
tem of the coast plains with its landed aristocracy and 
its slave economy did not agree well with the disposition 


and ideals of the free settlers of the interior. With few~ 


impedimenta they moved easily farther west, and they 
earried their idealism and religious peculiarities with 


them. Meantime New England emigration was getting 


a slow start. The development of the coast fisheries, the 
rapidly expanding commerce, and then the growth of the 
manufacturing industries that were to make New England 
famous, absorbed the attention of most of the people. 
A few New Englanders settled early in Ohio. The open- 
ing of the Erie Canal, combined with commercial decline 
and financial stress, set the Yankee in motion. He filled 
Jap western New York, opened up the Western Reserve 
72 


RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 73 


in Ohio, and pushed on into the Lake region of the Mid- } 
dle West, taking with him his community life and his | 
discipline of character, and to some extent his ecclesiasti-/ 
cal organization. 

Before the middle of the nineteenth century the frontier 
edge had passed to the Missouri River, and within ten 
years settlers from North and South were fighting out 
the slave issue in Kansas. By 1880 the frontier line ran 
through northern Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, 
through South Dakota, and up the western rivers. Before 
that time it had leaped the Rockies and advanced to the 
Pacific coast in California and Oregon. By 1890 go 


- much of the interior had been entered that the Govern- 


ment declared that the frontier could be said scarcely 
to exist any longer. A hundred years had seen the suc- 
cessful penetration of the continent from the Alleghanies 
to the Pacific Ocean. 

The western movement was undertaken partly from a 
love of adventure, partly from an economic motive. The 
industrious New Englander found better lands in the 
Mohawk valley and by Lake Erie. His success in ex- 
ploiting them attracted a stream of migrating followers. 
The Southerner in the bluegrass fields of Kentucky and 
the rich river bottoms of the Ohio valley found more 
room for expansion than Virginia and Carolina could 
give him. Land speculation lured some. Economic dis- 
turbances consequent upon the Revolution drove others 
afield. The opening of the country north of the Ohio 
with a free government according to the Ordinance of 
1787, and the purchase of the vast territory of Louisiana 
west of the Mississippi in 1803, attracted settlers with 
the limitless opportunity of expansion. 

Few migrations in history can compare with the ex- 
odus from the East to the West in America, and the 
supplementary migration from Europe to the American 
West. The changed environment deeply affected the life 
and character of the emigrants. Whole families were 


74 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


torn up by the roots, and sometimes the transplanting was 
not a success. It continued over so long a time and so 
large an area that it affected the destinies of a continent. 
America has been vitalized by the swift life currents of 
the frontier. The story of its settlement has thrilled every 
patriot with red blood in his veins. The trek of the 
pioneer across the mountain range that barred the coast 
plain from the hinterland; the fording of streams on the 
other side, and the threading of forests and slopes that 
formed the second line of advance; the fight with the 
red man who added to the terrors of the borderland, 
and who watched with misgiving the progress of the 
advance guard of civilization; the building of a hut 
in a clearing by a stream or spring; the emergence 
upon the prairie, and the erection of a sod house for 
the family until time and the crops made a better 
home possible; the far gleam of the western moun- 
tains and the beckoning of the lands beyond to those 
whose restlessness drew them on toward the setting 
sun—these make up a story that is one of the epics of 
history. 

The effects of the migration were felt.in the East. In 
the South they were not so serious as in the North. With 
its large plantations and negro labor the South was as well 
off without its surplus population. In New England and 
the Middle colonies the loss was not keenly felt as long 
as families continued large, and only a few from each 
community yielded to the western fever. When these 
conditions changed, coupled with the attraction of the 
erowing cities, the decline of Eastern rural communities 
became marked. In a single decade one Rhode Island 
county lost more than a thousand of its inhabitants, a 
New Hampshire county lost nearly six hundred, and 
half of the counties in Vermont showed a decline. In 
1860 Indiana and Michigan together contained fifty thou- 
sand persons who had been born in New England, Ohio 
and Wisconsin each had as many, and [Illinois boasted 


RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 75 


more than sixty thousand—a total of nearly two hundred 
and twenty thousand persons. 

This numerical loss to New England was a significant 
gain to the Middle West. In that section, which was 
destined to become the dominant part of the nation, the 
New England qualities that had shaped the colonial char- 
acter of the North were sown for a generous harvest. 
Rich in community institutions and strong in its moral 
fiber, New England life was a healthy strain, and it 
generated a sturdy stock for the building of the new 
America. Not less significant was the contribution of 
the Scotch-Irish who were most numerous among the early 
pioneers. They gave to the first period of migration the 
strong individualism and will power that was so necessary 
for the front line of continent conquerors, just as the 
Yankees provided the elements that were necessary for 
building enduring settlements. 

The importance of the West in American history can 
hardly be overestimated. Economically the values of the 
West are immeasurable. The mines, the forests, the agri- 
culture, the lake and river and railroad traffic are im- 
pressive reminders. Politically the West has had a com- 
manding influence. Ohio long ago wrested from Vir- 
ginia the honor of producing Presidents of the nation, and 
mountain and prairie senators and congressmen dispute 
with the East the leadership of public affairs. Upon 
American social life the broad, free temper of the West- 
erner has made its permanent impression. Psychologically 
the West was a stimulant. It fostered self-reliance and 
a self-determination that has made the West a power 
to be felt in all departments of life. | 

For a long time few opportunities were offered for 
cultivating the finer qualities. Frontier life is close to 
nature, It is in the raw. Its passions are elemental. It 
reacts emotionally rather than intellectually. A log cabin 
political campaign or a religious revival appealed to the 
love of the dramatic and sensational. They were expres- 


76 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


sions of the frontier mind that craves excitement and 
feeds on the bizarre and extravagant. The pioneer, re~ 
leased from the restraints of the older communities, 
coarsened by his struggle with beasts and savage men for 
existence, lacking the mental and moral poise that comes 
from social contacts, easily fell into bad habits, and was 
guilty of drunkenness, licentiousness, profanity, gambling, 
and general coarseness of speech and manners. ‘That 
was true of the pioneer period everywhere, from the Ken- 
tucky of Daniel Boone to the mining camps with which 
Bret Harte became familiar. 

Moral delinquency has not always meant irreligion. 
Presbyterians, Baptists and Quakers were among the 
vanguard of emigrants. They knew the fundamental doc- 
trines. ‘They had religious phrases on their tongues, even 
unction on lips stained with tobacco juice and moistened 
with white liquor. But they failed to apply religion to 
life. When religion came to them, it specialized in re- 
vivals from which moral lapses were easy, and men could 
be depended on to be sounder in theology than in ethical 
conduct and good will. 

The people of the frontier were not without occasional 
preaching, when itinerating evangelists came among them, 
but they lacked the church to conserve their emotion and 
make it fruitful. The preacher was their one inspiration, 
the prophet and savior of the frontier. Pushing his 
horse through a wilderness of forest, braving swollen 
streams and the danger of a savage foe, pressing on 
through summer heat and winter storms, stopping for a 
meal in a lonely cabin, sleeping where night found him 
with his saddle bags for a pillow, pondering on the 
Eternal while his horse foraged for noon rations, preach- 
ing in a house or out-of-doors wherever he could find a 
group to listen, he blazed a path for law and order, for 
morality and religion, in the new country beyond the 
mountains. 

The pioneer was followed soon by the permanent set- 


RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 17 


tler. Church people from the East sometimes settled near 
one another and held occasional religious meetings. In- 
stances occurred where the emigrants took their church 
organization along with them. But usually religion was 
represented by scattered individuals who lost connection 
with any church and became quite indifferent to the 
claims of religion. The virile force that rekindled their 
interest was the preacher whe rode his circuit through 
the settlements, the home missionary who came to the 
lonely family on the farm at sunset, as he had visited 
the pioneer clearing in the forest, sat with its members 
and talked quietly at the fireside, and was off at sunrise 
to carry to others the benign influence that was the saving 
salt of the countryside. He gained a response wherever 
the frontier went, because he found men and women with 
the same longings for faith and hope as in the East. 
On the outstretching prairie beneath a wide-arching sky, 
among the foothills of the Rockies where the eye sees 
deep vistas in the dry air, there eternal issues had a 
significance felt more deeply than in the circumscribed 
towns back East. 

The pioneering period dates from the era of the Revo- 
lution. In sixty years the vanguard of migration had 
come out upon the prairie, and the second period of group 
settlement had begun, with greater possibilities for civili- 
zation and moral and religious culture. The nation was 
interested in internal development. National roads were 
being built, and railroads were on the point of projection. 
The frontiersman with his innate democracy was learn- 
ing his political strength and demanding a share in na- 
tional management under the leadership of Andrew Jack- 
son. Not yet conscious of what it would be, the West 
was awakening to a vision of its future. 

As settlement increased, better organized evangelism 
was needed. In its beginnings the home mission enter- 
prise was not planned. Its development was genetic in 
character. But the danger that the material interests of 


78 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. 8. 


the homesteader would make him callous to the finer sensi- 
bilities and the deeper spiritual concerns compelled the 
astern churches to consider the problem of his religious 
destitution. 

In religion the West has been both an asset and a lia- 
bility. As an asset it has broadened the horizon of church 
interest, compelling home missions to keep pace with the 
advancing frontier. It has helped to make the church ~ 
democratic, and has responded most willingly to the more 
democratic among the religious denominations. The 
West has had a leveling influence; it appraises a man. 
for his real worth as a man, not for his wealth or position. 
The missionary demands made upon church people have 
cultivated generosity, until American Christianity has 
become renowned for its beneficence. The West has af- 
fected ecclesiastical organization, for missionary societies 
are conspicuous among the codperative organizations of 
the churches. Home missionary activity has resulted in 
the multiplication of churches and the addition of millions 
to church membership. 

Religion on the frontier has been a liability in that it 
required continual maintenance by outside effort. The 
people who had the will and the ability to carry on a 
church in any community without the assistance of a mis- 
sionary society were few. ‘Those hard-working rural folk, 
living close to the soil and tending to become materialized, 
no doubt needed an awakening to moral and religious 
values. ‘The creation of permanent ecclesiastical centers 
where regular preaching could be maintained and the 
conventional forms of religious observance could be set 
up, was impossible until the farm cultivator and his 
family had succeeded the more nomadic hunter and 
ranchman and had settled down within reach of neigh- 
bors. A lone family in a forest clearing or on the prairie 
could not constitute a flourishing church. Church people 
were drawn away from the villages and churches back 
Hast, but they did not become an ecclesiastical asset any- 


RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 79 


where else until they were numerous enough locally to 
maintain their own churches. Their religion needed to 
be conserved until it should become an active force once 
more. ‘The religious lability was assumed by the older 
churches of the East. They carried the emigrants on an 
ecclesiastical mortgage. They believed that there were 
potential assets in the frontiersman, as there were in the 
land, but it would take time to develop values. To turn 
the ecclesiastical liability into an asset was the task of 
the home mission societies of the evangelical denomina- 
tions, a task that took approximately seventy-five years 
(1825-1900). 

The story of American home missions is one of the 
great chapters of church history. It has never been told 
adequately. Its significance for the nation has never been 
realized fully. It is as thrilling as the story of the pioneer 
settlers, as dramatic as the tales of Indian battles and 
buffalo hunts on the plains, as consequential as anything 
that three centuries of national progress have produced. 
Nothing in the history of modern Europe can compare 
in scope or importance with the American exodus to the 
West, and nothing in the history of Catholic mediaevalism 
or the Protestant Reformation was more epochal in its 
consequences than the peaceful conquest of the Western 
mind and heart for Christian ideals. 

The task was so immense that it required special ec- 
clesiastical machinery. As early as 1801 the Presby- 
terians and Congregationalists formulated their Plan of 
Union for foreign and home mission work. In 1813 the 
Massachusetts and Connecticut missionary societies sent 
out investigators to make a survey through the older parts 
of settlement. Everywhere they found moral laxness and 
religious destitution, everywhere a dearth of religious 
inspiration and leadership. In certain localities they 
found Presbyterian ministers earning their living by 
school teaching, while the people lacked the institutions 
of religion. Within the next twelve years the Connecticut 


80 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


society, at that time the strongest. of the missionary or- 
ganizations, sent out two hundred missionaries and_or- 
ganized four hundred Presbyterian and Congregational 
churches. By that time a national organization seemed 
desirable, and Presbyterian, Congregational and Re- 
formed churches combined in the American Home Mis-. 
sionary Society, organized in. 1826. — 

The Baptists organized their home missionary society 
in 1832, Jonathan Going, a prominent. minister in the 
East, resigning his pulpit to become its secretary and 
one of its active agents on the ground. Baptists with 
their adaptability to frontier conditions, Methodists with 
their simple message of divine goodwill and their superb 
organization, took the lead in evangelizing the far terri- 
tory, and to them chiefly is due the credit of pioneering. 
Presbyterians built up the churches in the settled towns; 
Episcopalians coming later found most of the ground 
preémpted; Congregationalists sacrificed their denomina- 
tional interests that the universal gospel might abound. 

The home missionary societies of the East were di- 
rected by men who were moved by two strong convictions. 
The first was the obligation to preach religion to indi- 
viduals, the other a feeling that unless the Protestant 
churches should actively push their propaganda, either 
Catholicism would win new territory through European 
emigration or the vast reaches of the West would be occu- 
pied by irreligious Americans and the standards of the 
whole nation would be imperilled by that section. 

By 1835 a considerable part of the Middle West was 
taking on the characteristics of permanent settlement. 
The farmer cultivator had replaced the pioneer who had 
cleared the land, and with the increased help of machinery 
he was to become the producer of agricultural wealth. 
For him must be the church of the village, its Sunday 
school, and its gatherings for prayer or sociability. From 
eastern seminaries theological graduates went as groups 
to several of the western states, Turner, Gaylord, and 


RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 81 


nine others settling in Iowa, others going later to Kan- 
sas and even to Washington. Whole-souled men and 
women, like Marcus Whitman and his wife, pushed be- 
yond the Rockies and helped to open the Oregon country. 
When the Episcopalians were ready, they appointed their 
local clergymen in strategic situations and appointed over 
them Bishop Kemper, who bore the familiar title of 
“Bishop of All-out-doors.” The pastor of a home mission 
church was poorly paid. Sometimes he put up his own 
shack and helped to build a meeting-house. Often he had 
to depend on a stipend of a few hundred dollars from 
the missionary society supplemented by whatever the 
people were minded to give, and voluntarism was not 
always a generous giver. 

The minister was accompanied..by the school master, 
or himself added the teaching function to that of preach- 
ing. Some of the pioneer leaders of the church were far- 
seeing men, and they realized how much fresh water 
colleges could do for the growing West. The home mis- 
sionary had a vision of a settled future when a school 
would be as necessary as the church. One of them 
founded a colony in the Western Reserve of Ohio. He 
selected the first settlers, all of them professing Chris- 
tians. He organized a church in the first log cabin of 
the settlement. Soon followed a school and a public 
library, and within eight years from the first white set- 
tlement in the district an academy was founded, to grow 
with the increase of population into a college of high 
standing. A Methodist minister and a Catholic priest 
were leaders in the organization of the first state uni- 
versity, that of Michigan, a school that served as a model 
for similar institutions and that was opened for both 
sexes. A Congregational minister was the first super- 
intendent of public instruction for the State of Michigan. 
Baptists planted a college in every state as settlement 
moved westward. Of a certain Presbyterian minister 
who had worked wonders in the Far West it was said: 


82 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


“He must found colleges, create presbyteries and synods, 
inaugurate missions, and organize awakened desire into 
permanent institutions.” 

Among organizations that had grown out of the evan- 
gelical awakening at the beginning of the century were 
Sunday school and tract societies. The American Sun- 
day School Union, an undenominational organization, 
sent out agents into the West, who reénforced the efforts 
of the denominational agencies. Bible and tract societies 
supplied a religious literature that was to be increased 
later by the publication departments of the denominations, 
and colporteurs followed the pioneers far to the west. to 
their lonely ranches and farms. 

Beyond the great central valley were the wide spaces 
of the plains and the towering ranges of the Great Divide. 
Caravans of prairie schooners began to drag their slow 
length across the plains; venturesome prospectors dug 
their picks into the mountains in search of silver and 
gold; ranchmen drove the Indian and the buffalo from 
the plateaus and substituted cattle to multiply by the 
thousands. Not yet did the pioneer dream of the possi- 
bilities of irrigated land in the arid sections, or of the 
tremendous energy to be released from the water power 
of the mountain slopes and glens. Those features were 
to be visualized by a later generation. But men of faith 
and vision knew that the vast country of the mountains 
would draw to itself adventurous settlers, and they under- 
took to do their part in making the life of those settlers 
clean and pure and religious. To the ranches and among 
the mines and in infant settlements beyond the railroads 
went the colporteurs with Bible and tract; for people who 
needed the spur of religion and the comfort of eternal 
hope the evangelist pushed his jaded horse over endless 
miles to a meeting place; over the tiny churches that 
sprang up here and there the missionary societies placed 
shepherds of souls and gave general oversight to a bishop 
or a regional society. As settlement grew they planted 


RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 83 


schools, where the railroad went they sent a chapel car, 
when the automobile came they supplied a church on 
wheels with a gasoline engine. At a convenient point they 
held a conference of ministers to cheer the lonely men at 
their solitary stations. When the field of activity was 
hopelessly large for one denomination, the societies pooled 
their energies and made plans for codperation and a di- 
vision of the field. Such wisdom did not come at once. 
In the Middle West where every hamlet expected to be- 
come a thriving city too many rival churches were planted 
for the good of the community, and whole regions that 
failed to grow became overchurched with struggling ec- 
clesiastical enterprises of every name, while broad reaches 
of open farm country were insufliciently cultivated, but 
experience and a better spirit taught a better way in the 
Far West. | 

Nor were the Indians neglected in the swift coming 
of the white man. As preachers went among the Indians 
in colonial times when the Eastern country was filling up, 
so under home mission auspices evangelists visited the 
tepees of the Western Indians and spoke a religious mes- 
sage. The missionaries helped to atone for the neglect 
of the best interests of the Indians, of which the Govern- 
ment was too often guilty. It was a minister who en- 
couraged the Government at Washington to open Indian 
reservations, and helped to put one into operation in Kan- 
sas. It was a half-breed Indian, educated at an Eastern 
college, who planned Ottawa University in the same state 
for Indian education. 

During the same period and later devoted Catholic 
missioners gave themselves to frontier evangelism among 
both settlers and Indians. The same spirit of sacrifice 
that was exhibited by Protestant home missionaries sent 
them out into the Mississippi valley and beyond. Before 
the nineteenth century was half over they had pushed 
through to the mountain states and the Pacific. Father 
de Smet had a more powerful influence over the Indians 


84 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE UT. $8. 


than any other man of his time, acting as a diplomatic 
mediator for Government as well as for the church, and 
contributing to the safety of the frontier. In an inland 
region where their ecclesiastical influence was feared as 
unfriendly by the Protestant agencies the Catholics proved 
their worth as religious pioneers and friends of the set- 
tlers. 

After the Civil War was over the home mission agencies 
of the Protestant churches went into the South, at a time — 
when that prostrate section could not, if it would, give 
adequate aid to freedmen. ‘The societies planted schools 
and appointed teachers to guide the first essays in the 
path of liberty. To those schools is due the initial train- 
ing of the leaders of the colored race for their new citizen- 
ship. On the Pacific slope where Orientals entered the 
country from China and Japan missionaries introduced 
the same gospel that others were preaching to the home 
lands of the Orient. Over the border to Mexico and out 
to the islands of the Caribbean other missionaries went 
to proselyte among the Catholics of the Latin lands. 

The home missionary task became complicated by an 
increasing immigration of Old World races into the Amer- 
ican interior. The Irish did not ordinarily penetrate to 
the farms beyond the Alleghanies, but the Germans and 
Scandinavians moved to the West in large numbers and 
settled, the former east of the Mississippi, the latter west 
and north. These two peoples were of the finest Con- 
tinental stock, but they needed to be assimilated by the 
American, and it was part of the task of the home mis- 
sion societies to Americanize as well as to evangelize 
them. Most of them were Lutherans, because they had 
been brought up in the state churches of northern Europe. 
Lutheran most of them remained, but the distinctly Amer- 
ican denominations gathered recruits from the more pro- 
gressive among them. Oftentimes there were enough of 
these to constitute foreign-speaking churches and even 
associations of churches. These needed leaders, and to 


RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 85 


find them proved one of the most difficult problems of 
the societies. Reactionary leaders would keep the people 
a race-conscious group, that would make little religious 
or social progress. A progressive man would be very 
likely to hasten the process of merging the group into 
American fellowship, and this was sure to be resented 
by some of the conservatives among the foreigners. To 
guide the foreign-speaking churches was a peculiarly 
delicate task. 

The decade from 1880 to.1890 is a landmark in-home 
mission history. The older immigration gaye place to 
the new. Southern and eastern Europeans swarmed. into 
the Eastern cities and mining centers. The old frontier 
in the West ceased to exist, except as locally certain dis- 
tricts remained unsettled. The societies had to give 
their attention to the newcomers in the East, and to so- 
cialize their own methods in distinction from the indi- 
vidual approach that had been usual in the West. A new 
chapter opened in American church history. 

The frontier period of the history of religion in America 
had its consequences in the forms of church organization, 
in the development of certain characteristics in religious 
groups, in diversity of sects, and in an intensification of 
the independency that was won in the East when the 
frontier was a few miles back from the coast. 

The frontier called the national home mission societies 
into being, with all that is included in their history, and 
it was the stimulus to the organization of state conventions 
and conferences where episcopal organization was not 
provided. The state body brought into association mis- 
sionary churches scattered over a wide area, and served 
in cooperation with the home mission society or supple 
mentary to it as a missionary agency for church exten- 
sion. In a denomination like the Baptist the state con- 
vention supplied an important link between the local 
church and the whole denomination, and the state super- 
intendent of missions had a function of oversight of de- 


ae 


86 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S$. 


pendent churches that approximated that of a Methodist 
or Episcopal bishop. With few exceptions the denomina- 
tional machinery of Baptists, Congregationalists and 
Disciples is geared to missions, home and foreign. Boards 
of direction, committees of investigation, agencies of 
promotion among the churches, budgets, campaigns for sys- 
tematic giving, are all consequences of missionary opera- 
tions. Even the location of denominational headquarters 
may be determined by missionary relations or exigencies. 
With much truth it has been said: “Whatever its creed 
or form of polity, the main business in America hitherto 
has been geographical expansion and its organization has 
reflected this necessity.” 

Another consequence of the frontier is the intensifica- 
tion of individualism and democracy among the churches. 
These were characteristics of the people of the frontier. 
Their whole manner of life strengthened those charac- 
teristics. It had to be so. So many families lived remote 
from one another that they were thrown on their own re- 
sources. Absence of physicians and lawyers made them 
their own doctors and jurists. In religion they had their 
own decided religious opinions. When they did come 
together they found themselves on approximately the 
same level, and as a group they settled their group ques- 
tions in democratic fashion. It was inevitable that this 
individualism and democracy should dominate ecclesiasti- 
eal organization. Associations and conventions had come 
into existence almost always when the churches were 
frontier churches. The people that organized and consti- 
tuted them could not escape the sway of those principles. 
It is not alone the Congregationalists and Baptists whose 
organization is democratic. Neither Methodists nor Epis- 
copalians have an overhead authority for administration 
that is not subject to the decisions of the democracy as- 
sembled in General Conference or Convention. The power 
of revision and veto is in the hands of the people, even 
in those denominations. So much the more true is it of 


RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 87 


Disciples, Congregationalists and Baptists. The ecclesi- 
astical organization is true to the spirit of America, and 
the American spirit gets its temper from the frontier. 

The independency of the frontier folk has produced 
two other ecclesiastical consequences in the United States. 
One is the multiplication of sects. The same elements that 
were characteristic of the early history of the English 
Independents showed their presence on the frontier. 
There was a tendency for denominations to divide and 
to send off divergent branches that agitated for specific 
changes in doctrine and polity. There was a rivalry among 
these sects for a place in the sun. Each of them, no matter 
how closely they resembled one another in most respects, 
must have its own meeting-house and its own pastor. Each 
must play a prominent part in the ecclesiastical leader- 
ship of the community. This overchurching tendency has 
been most disastrous in its effects. Least serious is the 
waste of money and of effort, the duplication of tasks, the 
rivalries and jealousies among the churches. The reaction 
on the communities, on the people outside of the churches, 
has been such as to make them skeptical of the value 
of ecclesiastical religion, and unquestionably to weaken 
the morale of the nation. It is only within recent years 
that the efforts of the Home Missions Council in the di- 
rection of comity and codrdination have begun to counter- 
act the evil influences of decades of the narrow denomina- 
tionalism that individual independence and democratic 
freedom have engendered. 

The other consequence is an independence among’ local 
churches that makes them critical of the denominational ° 
organizations, sometimes secessionist in practice, and 
usually suspicious of the motives and beliefs of denomina- 
tional leaders. No more progressive and generally in- 
telligent people are to be found in the rank and file of 
church membership in this country than the people of 
the Middle West. Their experience has taught them not 
to be afraid of experiments. Their education in the state 


88 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. &%. 


universities that they have built up has given them trained 
intelligence. But where people have grown up under 
frontier conditions they have. fixed opinions.in.theology, 
opinions that have been received traditionally and retained 
unchanged from frontier days. These have tended to 
keep them unprogressive in their religious beliefs and to 
make them distrust the leaders of the schools who are 
less conservative. The farther west one goes, where the 
frontier influence still more strongly abides, the more de- 
cidedly conservative church people appear to be in their 
theology and the more responsive to primitive or pro- 
vincial ideas. All this reacts unfavorably on ecclesiastical 
progress. 

The frontier in America has passed into history. Home 
mission societies have been turning more of their atten-_. 
tion to the new frontier of the cities of the East. There, 
they believe, are the problems of America’s future, where 
the races meet and fuse, where the rivalries and antago- 
nisms of trade and industry provoke the clash of classes 
and the contradictions of races, where life is lived under 
the urge of the struggle for prestige and power. If re- 
ligion fails in America, it will fail most colossally in the 
cities. ‘The churches that have come into being on the 
frontier will have to solve their own difficulties. The 
people of the vanishing frontier of the West are capable 
of taking care of themselves. But the influences of the 
frontier will linger long in ecclesiastical circles. There 
will be a need of broadening, of culturing, so to speak, a 
need of faith in the spirit of man to work his way free 
from the limitations that have rested upon him as a re- 
ligious being. The nation needs the idealism of the 
West, its democratic spirit, its intensity of conviction, 
but the churches of the West, at least, need to socialize 
their individualism, make efficient their democracy, and 
apply their idealism to the insistent problems that vex 
twentieth century civilization at home and abroad. 

Over against any limitation of theological outlook are 


RELIGION ON THE FRONTIER 89 


the moral values that have been preserved or generated by 
home missions. ‘Eliminate from Western society the si- 
lent moral forces, all of them practically the creation of 
home missionary churches; the respect for law which 
they inculcate; the temperance they practice and help 
to enforce; the safeguarding of the young; the security 
of property and life; the cultivation of high moral ideals; 
the claims of humanity which they teach and practice ;— 
blot out all those forces which make up the morale of a 
commonwealth, socially, religiously, and politically, and 
something of the immeasurable value of the home mis 
sionary movement as related to order, morality, civic 
virtue, and national prosperity, would be appreciated.” 


VI. ADVENTURES IN ALTRUISM 


Tux same impulse that sent missionaries to pagan peo- 
ples and into the American West prompted beneficent 
enterprises for the unfortunate. Christian sympathy felt 
keenly the weakness of the intemperate and the misery 
of their families, was distressed over the evils of the 
prison system, and questioned the rightfulness of slavery. 
The reformers of the period had no understanding of social 
science, no conception of the necessity of getting at the 
root causes of the evils, but their feelings were stirred and 
they were eager to relieve suffering. Later came a clearer 
understanding of the nature of society and the character 
of social relations, both in the actual and the ideal, and 
reform became more constructive and systematic. 

It was the Wesleyan movement that first supplied the 
humanitarian impulse. Methodism itself did much to ac- 
complish the moral salvation of England. It carried re- 
ligion to the common people of England. It did more 
than that. It impregnated groups of persons high enough 
up in the social scale to act as leaders for reform, and 
through them set in motion a distinct effort to ameliorate 
bad conditions. John Howard, a London Baptist, gave 
his life to the improvement of the prisons, saturated as 
they were with filth and obscenity as well as criminality. 
Thomas Clarkson,.a Quaker, and William Wilberforce, 
an Anglican, agitated for the abolition of slavery in the 
British dominion. Robert Hall,..an eminent Baptist — 
preacher, championed the cause of the trade unions at a 
time when they were unpopular, condemning those “who 
withhold their hire from those who reaped the field.” 
Thomas Chalmers, a leader of the Scotch Presbyterians, 

| 90 


ADVENTURES IN ALTRUISM 91 


worked out in Glasgow a scheme for the scientific applica- 
tion of charity to the poor, blazing a trail for the charity 
organization societies that have become a normal part 
of modern city institutionalism. Father Mathew, an Irish 
Catholic priest, preached a crusade for total abstinence, 
and John Bright, “the most representative Nonconform- 
ist of the nineteenth century,” was an earnest supporter 
of temperance. 

The contrast between the hardships of English work- 
ing folk and the relative comfort and immensely greater 
opportunity of Americans was noticeable. The habit of 
New England thrift sent many women and children into 
the workshops in such cities as Lawrence and Lowell, 
where the confinement was often irksome and the hours 
were long, but Americans were accustomed to work long 
and hard for small returns, and the social intercourse af- 
forded by the workroom and the factory town was so 
agreeable to those whose outlook had been restricted to 
the isolated farm or the small village that it was a com- 
pensation for the confinement. If work in the factory 
or on the New England farm became too irksome, the 
laborer might return home or pull up stakes and go 
west. 


As manufacturing increased in New England, cities } 


became congested with the families of the workers, and 
emigration to the West was impossible for such workers, 
the irksome conditions of the factory and the home 


created a spirit of dissatisfaction and insurgency, and | 
contributed to the organization of labor unions, Through © 


them working men agitated for shorter hours and better 
wages. This movement did not elicit the sympathy of 
religious people, as might have been expected, because 
religion did not as yet move easily in social channels and 
because those who usually molded the church mind were 
the owners of factory machinery, the employers of labor. 
They were men who had worked hard to get ahead, and 
it hardly occurred to them in those days that hard work 


92 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


was not healthy to body or mind under the new indus- 
trial conditions. The industrial awakening of the 
churches had to wait for a generation or two. 

In spite of the undesirable conditions in the factory 
towns, the long hours of toil and the small wages, the 
purchasing power of money was greater than now and 
the conditions of living were better than in rural or 
industrial England. Americans in general did not suffer 
hunger, and while everybody drank liquor of some kind, 
it was not in an effort to drown misery. Shiftless and 
unfortunate persons there were, of course, scattered among 
the colonies and the newer states, ne’er-do-wells who 
never got on, sinners and sots who served as a foil to set 
off the general prosperity. Rude as comforts and cus- 
toms were, the people of America were better off than 
Englishmen. 

The churches were conservers of morals and religion. 
Everywhere the meeting-house reminded the people of 
moral and spiritual obligation, and religion was a real 
force in the home and the community. Fathers of families 
had not forgotten to conduct family prayers and to say 
grace at meals. Families went to church together, sat 
in the family pew, and in due time one by one the chil- 
dren took upon themselves the responsibilities of church 
membership. Ministers made pastoral.calls upon their 
flock, and were entertained at dinner or supper as hon- 
ored guests. Men and women were willing to practice 
self-denial to pay the minister’s salary and contribute to 
sending the gospel to the heathen. On the frontier where 
it was easy to dispense with religion and compromise with 
morals, the preacher was given a hearty welcome, and 
the whole community helped to put up a shack for a 
meeting-house. Religion of that sort might not be very 
enlightened, theology might be antiquated, and the social 
application of the gospel might be little understood, 
nevertheless religion was a vital force. Yet with the 
disposition to exploit material or human resources, per- 


ADVENTURES IN ALTRUISM 93 


sonal hardships and social inequalities were sure to ap- 
pear. The law favored the master rather than the worker. 
There are records of overwork, injustice and cruelty. At- 
tempts of the workers to band together that they might 
make their demands more effective were met with opposi- 
tion. When the trade unions began to make their power 
felt in the thirties, they complained of inequality of 
taxation, of unfair credit and banking systems, of im- 
prisonment for debt, and of insufficient educational privi- 
leges. Against these the struggle of insurgency went on 
for a time, as the political and religious struggles had 
been waged, and the worst abuses were remedied. 

Certain social evils were less easily removed. In- 
herited from England, and not realized as serious evils, 
or intrenched in the economic or political system and so 
defended by their beneficiaries, they were apparently 
fixed in the body social. Such was the evil of intemper- 
ance and the evil of slavery. Such, too, were imprison- 
ment for debt, and the harsh punishments visited upon 
prisoners, the disgraceful condition of the prisons and 
the promiscuous mixing of the inmates; the common 
practice of gambling and the resort to lottery to raise 
money for eleemosynary purposes; the callousness to the 
physical suffering of animals and even of human beings; 
the indifference to the fate of the Indian who was driven 
steadily westward to make way for the settler greedy 
for his land. Here was a broad field for reform, and 
boundless opportunity for the reformer. 

The movement for reform was undertaken first by indi- 
viduals who reacted more sensitively to human need than 
the majority of citizens. Doubtless the humanitarianism 
of these individuals was quickened by religion, but few 
churches interested themselves in unfortunate individuals 
or classes. Church people in general believed that misery 
was the consequence of individual sin or of the frown 
of the Almighty. There were groups of religious peo- 
ple who took an uncommon interest in misfortune or op- 


94 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S$. 


pression. Quakers, Unitarians, and Free Baptists were 
especially sympathetic. Quakers have always been in 
the forefront of any humanitarian enterprise. Unitarians, 
with their emphasis on the worth of man, were quicker 
than most other sects to see that philanthropy was essen- 
tially religious. They organized societies for the im- 
provement of seamen, for the suppression of intemper- 
ance, for peace, and for the employment of the poor. 
They supplied leaders of social reform in excess of their 
proportionate membership. 

A particular social evil that was inherited from the 
older social order of Europe was imprisonment for debt. 
The poor man had no escape from his creditor. If he 
was unable to pay, his last bit of property could be taken 
to satisfy the claim. No law had yet been passed giving 
him the right to keep a minimum of his possessions. 
When his property was gone, his person might be seized 
and confined in one of the horrible prisons that were 
characteristic of America as well as England before the 
days of prison reform, there to remain until the sum 
was paid. Charitable people were willing to help provide 
food and clothing to the prisoner, but apparently never 
thought of improving the wretched surroundings. 

Prison reform was long hindered in the United States 
because of political influence and interference, but the 
story of the nineteenth century is a story of gradual 
gains. The colonies started with the handicap of crim- 
inals dumped by the mother country on these shores from 
1619 to the Revolution. Other persons were shut up for 
all sorts of offences. Quakers were put to hard labor in 
Massachusetts for interfering with ‘the religion of the 
colony. The prisons were nurseries of crime and breed- 
ing places of disease. Most of them had underground 
dungeons, used for the confinement of incorrigibles. One 
prison in Connecticut was itself underground, formerly a 
copper mine, reached only by a ladder, dripping with 
moisture, yet in wooden pens below convicts were fastened 


ADVENTURES IN ALTRUISM 95 


head and foot and kept for years. In Worcester, North- 
ampton, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia condi- 
tions that beggar description were found by investigators. 

Reform began in Pennsylvania in 1786. The Quakers 
and an improvement society of Philadelphians took the 
lead. The Pennsylvania legislature was invoked, and 
the penal code was studied and improved. Extreme and 
degrading punishments were abolished, and the death pen- 
alty was removed for a few offences. Wholesome but not 
severe labor was provided for; the abominable practice 
of drinking in prisons at the common expense was ended. 
New Hampshire and New York made improvements 
before the end of the eighteenth century, and others fol- 
lowed in the early years of the nineteenth. 

No religious instruction was given to prisoners.until 
after the Revolution. The first sermon in the Philadel- 
phia penitentiary was preached literally at the mouth of 
a cannon to prevent disorder and rioting. In the north- 
eastern part of the country it became the custom about 
1830 to supply the prisons with Bibles, to hold Sunday 
schools and to appoint chaplains, but the churches had no 
conception of the larger responsibility of probing to the 
roots of crime and trying to find remedies. Beginnings 
were made in secular instruction, and prison libraries and 
debating societies came into existence. These reforms 
owed something to the sympathy of those who had been 
sensitized by the spirit of Christianity, and in large de- 
gree by those who were members of Christian churches. 

Crime and vice were frequently the result of intem- 
perance. In 1820 over seven gallons per capita of dis- 
tilled spirits were consumed. Liquors were considered 
indispensable on all social occasions. Even among the 
clergy the decanter was on the sideboard and drunken- 
ness was not uncommon. The awakening came early in 
the nineteenth century. Dr. Benjamin.Rush of Phila- 
delphia wrote a paper showing the ill effects of intemper- 
ance upon the physical system, and in 1811 presented 


96 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


a thousand copies of it to the Presbyterian General As- 
sembly with a letter urging action. A committee was 
appointed to consider measures of reform. ‘This action 
marked the beginning of denominational activity in the 
interest of temperance. Within twenty years more than 
a thousand local organizations and eleven State societies 
gave evidence of the widespread interest in the subject. 
The impulse was stimulated by six temperance sermons _ 
given wide circulation by Lyman Beecher of Litchfield, 
Connecticut. . 

Total abstinence societies with their hundreds of thou- 

sands of pledge takers testified to the strength of the reac- 
tion against indulgence in liquors. The Woman’s Chris- 
tian Temperance Union in its name recognized the re- 
ligious motive in the campaign. Experiments in political 
prohibition were made and a Prohibition party started. 
Ministers of churches made up much of the strength of 
the party and were the most vigorous advocates of the 
policy of prohibition. During the second half of the 
century a healthy growth of sentiment developed against 
the liquor traffic. The moral arguments of reformers 
were reinforced by the economic waste. The enormous 
expenditure of hundreds of millions yearly for such in- 
dulgence as compared with less than three hundred mil- 
lions for schools and one-tenth of that number for min- 
isters’ salaries was thought-provoking. Added to this 
was the loss of wages of workingmen through drunken- 
ness. Intemperance was a well-known concomitant of 
ill health, crime, and the social evil. 
* The organization of the Anti-Saloon League in Ohio 
in 1893 was a federation of existing agencies with the 
active support of the churches, and became the chief 
agency in sweeping the country twenty-five years later 
for constitutional prohibition. 

The crying evil of the age was negro slavery. The 
cupidity of European traders could be blamed for fasten- 
ing the institution upon America, but Americans ac 


ADVENTURES IN ALTRUISM 97 


quiesced in it wherever it was economically profitable. On 
the small farms of the North slave labor was of small 
value, and in the households negro labor was less eff- 
cient than hired help. It was different in the South. 
In the older Southern states slavery seemed likely to 
die out until cotton became a profitable crop. Even then 
the slaves were treated paternally, and most of the negroes 
were better off under the influences of American civiliza- 
tion than they had been in savage Africa, better even than 
serfs of ancient or mediaeval times. It was different in the 
newer. South, where large plantations were planted to 
cotton, sugar, or rice, where slaves were owned by the 
thousand and were worked under the superintendence of 
hired overseers. Slaves from the border states were sold 
off the estates to the Southern planters, families were fre- 
quently broken up and new connections made without the 
bother of legal ceremony; whites and negroes debauched 
each other with their vices. These were almost inevit- 
able consequences of racial subordination and economic 
exploitation, and they created an evil that became in- 
tolerable. 

Rarely has the South been given credit for Christian- 
izing and civilizing the negro. Brought out of African 
slavery, planted in a new environment, without schools 
or moral training, the man of color might have ruined 
the South. Instead he became the means of its agri- 
cultural prosperity, and in return master and mistress 
made him into a civilized being. He had his own home 
life in a cabin on the plantation; he received a practical 
manual training in house, stable and field; in spite of 
his ignorance and superstition he was taught the rudi- 
ments of the Christian religion, usually after the Bap- 
tist or Methodist fashion. ‘The negroes revelled in the 
enjoyment of emotional piety. Unfortunately religion 
did not chasten their moral nature, and they were lack- 
ing in self-control. At best the slave system was a social 
order that did not belong to the nineteenth century, and 


98 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE JU. S. 


even the Southern landholders whose property was de- 
pendent for its value on slavery did not attempt for some 
time to defend it on principle. Men like Jefferson and 
Madison now and then proposed its abolition, but the 
plan did not seem feasible. | 
American slavery was for a long time solely an eco- 
nomic affair. . The conscience of the people hardly stirred 
until humanitarianism began to exert its influence. The 
denominational bodies were the first to protest strongly 


against the system. The Quakers spoke against it as 


early as 1688, and later on excluded any of their mem- 
bers who engaged in it. In the revolutionary period 
Samuel Hopkins, the Newport theologian, took strong 
ground against a trade that flourished in his own port, 
and his Congregationalist church voted that no slave 
holder should keep his membership in the local organiza- 
tion. Individuals among the Presbyterians maintained 
a similar advanced position. The younger Edwards 
preached a sermon against the slave trade before the 
Connecticut Abolition Society, which was printed and 
circulated widely North and South. In 1774 the first 
abolition society was organized by the Pennsylvania 
Quakers, an example followed by the Friends in Eng- 
land nine years later. Other societies were organized 
along the coast north of Virginia. 

No body of Christians has done so much for their 
fellows in social and moral reform in proportion to their 
numbers as have the Friends, or Quakers. They were 
the first to recognize the right of the slave to his freedom 
and to free those whom they held. Sometimes they bought 
slaves to set them free, or to make it possible to work 
out their freedom. They would not even hire slave labor, 
and were known to boycott the products of such labor. 
They encouraged the religious interest of the slaves, and 
helped some of them to educate themselves. Later they 
assisted slaves to escape, but confined their efforts to peace- 
ful measures, and never countenanced the political move- 


ADVENTURES IN ALTRUISM 99 


ment for abolition or the resort to arms. Whittier, the 
Quaker poet, won deserved fame for his songs of freedom. 

Methodists and Baptists both put themselves on record 
against slavery, and this is the more remarkable as both 
denominations were strong in the South. After the Revo- 
lution the Methodist Conference declared slavery to be 
contrary to all law and conscience, and harmful to human 
society. Southern Baptists a few years later resolved 
that slavery was inconsistent with republican government 
and the rights of nature, and recommended the extirpa- 
tion of the “horrid evil’ by every possible legal means. 

The prospect of gradual abolition vanished after the 
invention of the cotton gin. By 1818 the Presbyterian 
church, representing all parts. of the country, was moved 
to express itself forcibly against the slave institution, de- 
nouncing it as unwarranted by nature or the law of God, 
and as inconsistent with Christianity, as leading to moral 
weakness and irresponsibility, and at best as being a 
violation of the natural rights of freedom. Furthermore 
the Assembly declared it to be the duty of Christians “to 
use their honest, earnest and unwearied endeavors to cor- 
rect the errors of former times, and as speedily as possi- 
ble to efface this blot on our holy religion and to obtain 
the complete abolition of slavery throughout Christendom, 
_and if possible throughout the world.” 

This action was taken because it was apparent that 
the slave system was becoming aggressive. New slave 
territory was being opened in the South along the Gulf. 
The country north of the Ohio was being settled by 
Southerners first of all, but it was generally admitted that 
it would not be worth while to try to introduce slavery 
there, though Baptist and Methodist ministers once nipped 
such a conspiracy in the bud. The serious question was 
whether slavery would be restricted to the southern country 
_ east of the Mississippi River, or whether the system would 
reach out for new cotton fields in the farther West. It 
was becoming apparent that the slaveholders would not be 


100 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


contented with what they possessed already. They wanted 
a share in the exploitation of the boundless acres that 
stretched away to the horizon, and they wanted to keep 
the balance of power in the national Government. It was 
with this in mind that the Presbyterian Assembly uttered 
its strong protest. 

The discussion over the admission of Missouri to the 
Union, followed, ending in compromise. During’ the 
thirties political agitation was concerned with other mat- 
ters. Partisan politics were absorbing and economic in- 
terests demanded attention, especially before and after 
the panic of 1837. But interest in the slave issue was 
not slumbering; individual agitators like William Lloyd 
Garrison were crying out hoarsely for abolition and 
nothing but abolition; the churches were considering seri- 
ously their obligations. The conviction grew among the 
churches that the slave issue must not be dodged. More 
and more were Northern people convinced that slavehold- 
ing was wrong, but how to deal with it was a delicate 
and perplexing question. As Christian churches at pres- 
ent are becoming more convinced that there are social 
evils to be eradicated, and that the churches ought to take. 
a firmer stand against every form of wrong, but hesitate 
over the method, so it was with reference to the towering 
evil of that time. But a changing sentiment was com- 
ing over the South. When Northern Baptists, Metho- 
dists, and Presbyterians urged their Southern friends ~ 
to emancipate their servants and threatened them with 
discipline for persistence in their course, the Southerners 
who regarded themselves as equally good Christians as 
were the complainants justified themselves by appealing 
to the example of the Old Testament worthies. Such an — 
argument was forceful among those who regarded all 
, parts of the Bible as equally inspired for the guidance of 
human conduct. The Southern attitude troubled those 
who wanted peace at all costs, yet whose consciences 
were not easy. 


ADVENTURES IN ALTRUISM 101 


Midway in the next decade both the Methodist and 
the Baptist churches North and South broke apart over 
questions relating to slavery. It was an omen of evil 
days to come. No definite policy seemed possible among 
the Methodists. An attempt to quell the turbulent abolli- 
tionists in the church resulted in a secession of the fiercest 
of them. An attempt to deal kindly but conscientiously 
with Southern members led to an agreement by which 
a separation was effected, and in 1845 the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, South, was fully organized. In the 
same year the Southern Baptists reorganized. This was 
due to the precipitate action of the Alabama State Con- 
vention demanding a statement that no discrimination 
would be made against slaveholders in appointments of 
missionaries and officers on denominational boards. The 
general denominational body was thus forced to take a 
stand for principle, and the Foreign Missionary Society 
replied to the demand that it could not in any way give 
the seal of its approval to slavery. This incident forced 
the two sections apart, and resulted in the organization 
of the Southern Baptist Convention, which undertook its 
own foreign and home mission and publication and edu- 
cational obligations. Before the Civil War the Presby- 
terians suffered similar schism, and during the conflict 
the Episcopalians of North and South enjoyed neither 
fellowship nor cooperation. At the close of the war 
the Episcopal organization was able to unify both sec- 
tions by ignoring the temporary separation, but the more 
independent bodies that had separated earlier found it 
impossible to reunite. 

As the conflict thickened various incidents showed the 
attitude of uncompromising church people. When the 
attempt was made by Southern sympathizers to secure 
control of Kansas, hundreds of ministers signed a moral 
protest and sent it to Congress. Harriet Beecher Stowe, 
wife of a theological professor, thrilled the North and 
enraged the South with her story of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 


102 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S$. 


Ministers in the South ardently defended the canse for 
which that section of the country was contending. It was 
exceedingly difficult for people in the free states to under- 
stand how Christian people of the South ecwuld justify 
slavery. There can be no question that the Scuthern 
people were religious; they have been probably the most 
religious portion of the nation. But their religion did 
not require them to give up an institution that seemed 
to them to be much better than freedom for the negro in 
spite of abuses in certain quarters. No one can read 
the sermons of Southern divines without believing that 
it was the honest conviction of church men and women 
that they were commissioned of God to rule a subject 
race as were the Hebrews in the land of Canaan. Min- 
isters prayed as confidently as in the North for the bless- 
ing of the Lord of Hosts on those who fought for the 
Cause, and when it was apparent that it was a lost 
Cause because their resources were exhausted, they be- 
lieved none the less in its justice. 

Nor was the Northern conscience universally troubled 
about slavery. When the war came it was supported for _ 
the defense of the Union rather than for the emancipa- 
tion of the slave... The churches helped to organize Chris- 
tian and Sanitary Commissions to aid in preserving the 
health and morals of the soldiers. Ministers volunteered 
as chaplains in field and hospital to bring cheer and con- 
solation, as they did on the other side of the line. The 
moral conviction of the North clarified itself as the war 
went on. The people generally supported the Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation of the President as not only a justi- 
fiable war measure but a moral necessity too. After the 
war they insisted on the civil rights of the negro, and 
promptly founded schools for his improvement. But it 
is reasonable to believe that most of this happened as a 
consequence of war fervor. The emancipation of the 
slave would have been a much slower process had the 
war not come, for the conscience of the people was only 


ADVENTURES IN ALTRUISM 103 


slowly becoming sensitive enough to carry through so 
gigantic a reform. The excitement of the war carried 
the reform farther than conditions warranted, and the 
negro became a persistent problem for the whole nation, 
not alone of the South. In church circles the war pro- 
duced divisions that many decades could not heal. 


VII. THE RELIGIOUS MIND IN THE MAKING 


Tue period between the Revolution and the Civil War 
is marked by a definite growth in the religious conscious- 
ness of the American people. In spite of the Puritan 
ancestry of many, relatively few persons belonged to the 
churches, not more than one out of twenty-five at the 
outbreak of the war against Great Britain. People in 
general were indifferent in their attitude towards religion. 
They were concerned with the practical things of agri- 
culture and business and politics. They were bringing 
broad acres under cultivation, rearing large families, 
leaving both in order to fight during the war, and after- 
wards sharing in the experimental task of building a 
nation. 

The evangelistic activities at the turn of the century 
and subsequently brought many more persons into the 
churches.. Between 1800 and 1850 the number of church 
members increased from 365,000 to 3,530,000, a gain of 
one thousand per cent. Such an increment invigorated the 
churches, and had the effect of extending their influence 
in the local communities. ‘The simple routine of the 
eighteenth century churches did not require much activity 
from the laity, but the new recruits had a keener sense 
of religious obligation. The obligation to propagate the 
gospel encouraged evangelism at home and missions 
abroad. ‘The obligation to give religious training to 
children resulted in the organization of the Sunday School. 
The obligation to relieve human suffering produced phil- 
anthropic and reform organizations. When Sunday 
schools were organized, superintendents and teachers 
were needed; when the churches kindled with an interest 

104 


7 


THE RELIGIOUS MIND IN THE MAKING 105 


in missions, women’s local missionary societies came into 
existence, and out of their small resources earnest women 
made generous contributions. Philanthropic enterprises 
enlisted those who were sensitive to human misfortunes. 
Religion proved to be a larger concept than it had been 
traditionally. The church, like the nation, grew in terri- 
tory, expanded its interests and obligations, and came to 
understand its values more clearly in the century be 
tween 1765 and 1865. 

Yet, while the religious mind broadened in the con- 
ception of its task, it was slow to change the content of 
its code. Like other social institutions, the church was 
the creature of tradition .and.custom.. Its forms of or- 
ganization and worship, its ordinances or sacraments, its 
doctrines and creeds, had the sanction of a religious mind 
that was trained from early childhood to believe in their 
validity. Religious belief found authority for them in 
the divine will. Even in the atmosphere of revolt against 
custom and tradition that characterized the Revolutionary 
period, a revolt which with some persons involved a loss 
of faith in religion altogether, the church mind seemed 
not to change. Not that modifications did not take place 
from time to time. More or less unconsciously the mind 
was in process of development. 

Two conflicting forces were at issue in the religious 
mind from the beginning of American history—the obli- 
gation to think and act in obedience to certain principles 
that had been inherited from the past, and freedom under 
the new colonial conditions to change the code.. The 
sense of religious obligation had sent the Puritan on 
migration rather than give up his cherished principles, 
but the impulse to freedom made him organize his churches 
after a new pattern, and to work himself free from the 
State control of religion. The belief in the excellence 
of Calvinism made Jonathan Edwards its champion, but 
the impulse to break over homiletic barriers made him 
a revivalist. On the other hand, his opponent, Charles 


106 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


Chauncy, held to the orderly methods of religious pro- 
fession, but repudiated the rigorous creed of the orthodox 
churches. But the rank and file of church people be- 
lieved and practiced according to custom. 

The most important. part of the church code was its 
system of theological thought. Both organization and 
activity rested on certain cherished ideas. These ideas 
had been wrought into a coherent system of belief by the 
theologians of the Reformation. Many of these ideas 
were survivals of medieval Catholicism, but Protestant- 
ism had personalized religion in removing the priest from 
his position as a necessary intermediary between man 
and God, and had stressed the attitude of heart towards 
God as more important than any act of merit. The 
theology of most church people had as its cardinal doc- 
trine a belief in an absolute, unchanging God, perfect 
in his attributes, holy, just, and good. Transcendent in 
majesty and enthroned in the heavens, he made the earth 
his footstool and stooped to hear the petitions of his sub- 
jects, domiciled there by his creative act. The human 
race was tangled in a net of evil through the fall of the 
first man from the place of honor and opportunity for 
which he had been designed. The only means of salva- 
tion from sin was personal faith in God’s grace as re- 
vealed and made dynamic through the sacrifice of Jesus 
Christ on the cross, and sanctification by the indwelling 
presence of the Holy Spirit, who with the Father and the 
Son constituted the divine Trinity. Since in Adam the 
race had sinned against him, God was under no obliga- 
tion to save its members from the consequences of their 
sin, but his gracious mercy chose to save a few through 
the merits of the blood of Jesus, which cleansed them 
from their sin, and made atonement for them with an 
outraged God. Those who were not thus cleansed were 
doomed after a day of judgment to suffer eternal punish- 
ment in a hell of torment. 

The religious attitude towards mundane things was 


THE RELIGIOUS MIND IN THE MAKING 107 


critical and inclined to asceticism. Material things and 
the desires of the carnal mind were deceitful to the soul. 
The Christian must deny himself pleasures that might 
lead his feet to stray from the straight and narrow path 
that was marked out by the Bible, his infallible guide. 
By prayer and occasional fasting he should discipline 
his froward heart to seek good rather than evil. Church 
worship was expected of him regularly, and it was his 
duty to participate in the ordinances of baptism and 
the Lord’s Supper, though they had no regenerating 
power, except to sacramentalists hke Catholics and High 
Church Episcopalians. The church was a bond of Chris- 
tian fellowship and an ark of safety. It was its task 
to rescue aS many sinners as possible from an evil world 
that was doomed to destruction, to convert them to per- 
sonal faith and hope in Christ as their Savior, and to 
cultivate in them a Christian character that would stand 
against the assaults of temptation and assure them an 
entrance at death into the land of the blessed where they 
would abide in eternal happiness and blissful ease. 

Beyond these conceptions the religious mind of most 
Americans had not gone. This was the theology that was 
preached in revivals, taught in Sunday schools, explained 
by missionaries, discussed in conference and assembly. 
Different denominations and parties within them differed 
in minor details, small groups, like the Freewill Baptists 
denied Calvinistic determinism, or like the Unitarians 
denied the Trinity, or like the Universalists denied fu- 
ture punishment, but the large majority of church people 
were orthodox. 

The perpetuation of orthodox religion in America re- 
quired instruments of education. These might be schools 
and colleges, books and periodicals and above all else 
Bibles, and sermons that would be at the same time ex- 
planatory and persuasive. Influences must be brought to 
bear upon children in the formative stage of their minds; 
hence the publication and tract societies. 


108 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE JU. S$. 


In the sparsely settled American country education 
was not easy. Ever since the original settlers had left 
England it had been difficult to give attention to educa- 
tion of any sort. ven in the mother country only a few 
had enjoyed the benefit of schooling. The religious in- 
struction of the children was not forgotten in the homes 
of the conscientious Puritans, and elementary and gram- 
mar schools were a part of the social furniture of New 
England in the larger towns. The Bible and the New Eng- 
land Primer with its moral exhibits were school books, and 
religious and moral instruction was possible under public 
auspices for a people homogeneous in race and religion. 
But schools were not free for all everywhere as later, 
and even in the better parts of New England the support 
of the schools became half-hearted; when the drift of 
irreligion and the introduction of new textbooks weakened 
the piace of the Bible and the Primer, and denominational 
bodies found it impossible to agree as to what sort of re- 
ligion should be taught, religious teaching was eliminated 
from most of the schools. Outside of New England public 
schools were uncommon, and only the children of the 
well-to-do found room in private schools. 

Two considerations were weighty in creating an in- 
terest in the extension of education, besides the obvious 
advantage of literacy in making a living. One was re-_ 
ligious. A religion in which reading the Bible and lis- 
tening to sermons played so large a part required intelli- 
gence on the part of laymen and training for the clergy. 
The other was political. As the nation grew democratic, 
it became necessary that the people should be acquainted 
with public questions, and should be able to understand 
and join in political discussions. The progress of edu- 
cation was most popular wherever the New England in- 
fluence spread; in the Middle West schools sprang up 
through that influence more rapidly than could have been 
expected. Ministers were frequently school teachers, and 
their influence was on the side of education in the older 


THE RELIGIOUS MIND IN THE MAKING 109 


sections of the country. For boys and girls the academy 
was adopted from England. Usually under church aus- 
pices, this grade of school provided an education that would 
fit them for intelligent citizenship and Christian living. 
Supported by private benefaction, sometimes with public 
assistance, the academy became the main reliance of the 
people for education where the grammar school had not 
flourished and the high school had not yet come into 
existence. Hight colleges were founded before the Revo- 
lution, and a hundred more were added within the next 
sixty years. They were of little higher grade than the 
nineteenth century academies; boys finished their courses 
of study by the time they had reached their middle teens. 
Colleges like Harvard and Yale, Princeton and Columbia, 
Brown and Dartmouth, were founded primarily for minis- 
terial education, and for a time they made the study of 
divinity the central item in the curriculum. Teachers 
and administrators were usually ministers, and in de 
nominational colleges it was required that they must be 
orthodox in the faith. The defection of the Faculty at 
Yale from Congregationalism to Episcopacy required a 
change in administration in the early years of the college. 
The election of Ware to a professorship of divinity at 
Harvard a century later meant that that college had been 
definitely lost to Unitarianism by the Congregationalists. 

As population increased colleges multiplied and grew 
in size and in resources. As they became less conspicu- 
ously training schools for the ministry, their curriculum 
broadened and theological education was relegated to 
professional schools. For freer instruction State univer- 
sities were created. They threw open their doors without 
expense for tuition on the principle that education was for 
the training of citizenship, and presently women as well 
as men were taking advantage of an educational oppor- 
tunity that was free from denominational handicaps and 
that offered a broader course of instruction than did the 
denominational schools. Until normal schools were de- 


110 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. §S. 


vised the academies and colleges provided the training 
for public school teachers. Before many years had passed 
the State universities of the South and the Middle West 
were becoming so popular and strong in resources as to 
threaten the very existence of the denominational colleges. 
But the churches depended on the colleges to train their 
ministers, and were willing to pay for the support of the 
schools in order that their young people might be educated 
in a religious atmosphere. ‘Thus the small college could 
depend on an ecclesiastical constituency, but its policy was 
determined by the church mind, which was not cordial. 
to new tendencies in education. Though with narrow 
vision, the distinctively Christian schools rendered a real 
service to the nation in the recruiting and training of 
thousands of religious leaders, both ministerial and lay. 

The first Protestant theological seminary to be opened 
for the training of ministers was under the shadow of the 
- Phillips Academy at Andover, Massachusetts, in 1808. 
When colleges were few, and not easily accessible, promi- 
nent ministers had admitted theological students into 
their homes and had shared with them their experience and 
given them clinical training. Men of the schools had 
greater prestige among the churches as well as ability, and 
when the demand warranted colleges sprang up in every 
section. But the professional school seemed advisable for 
several reasons... he Catholics had established a seminary 
at Baltimore for the training of priests as early as.1791. 
The New Light. Presbyterians had organized their Log 
College in Pennsylvania for the special purpose of train- 
ing evangelists. The most powerful motive in the found- 
ing of Andover Seminary was to preserve orthodoxy after 
the Unitarians had captured Harvard College. Other de- 
nominations promptly followed the example of the Con-_ 
gregationalists, providing the professional education which 
was no longer the principal part of the college curriculum. 
The theological schools were important in maintaining the 
standard of an educated ministry, but like the colleges 


THE RELIGIOUS MIND IN THE MAKING 111i 


many of them were of inferior quality. Like all profes- 
sional schools they were conservative in ideas, and by 
segregating their students apart from the active currents 
of society they did not fit them altogether well for a pro- 
ductive ministry. It is only in recent years that theo- 
logical schools have become progressive in their ideas, 
modern in their outlook, broader and richer and more 
practical in their curricula. 

Other instruments besides the schools helped to make 
the religious mind of America. The renewed energy 
that came with the awakened interest in religion, so gen- 
eral about 1800, and that produced the missionary move- 
ments abroad and on the western frontier, resulted in the 
organization of a variety of associations, many of them 
of an educational nature. Some of them were accessory 
to organized missions, like Bible and tract societies, others 
were humanitarian like the Seamen’s Friend Society, one 
was for the distinct purpose of encouraging evangelism 
and religious instruction, the American Sunday School 
Union. 

Bible and tract societies were organized for the distri- 
bution of religious literature, especially in that part of 
the country where religious privileges were enjoyed inter- 
mittently. It was not sufficient to send preachers out on 
religious propaganda. They were not numerous enough 
to go around. On the frontier they were couriers of a day, 
voicing their message and disappearing over the horizon. 
Then, too, most of them were ignorant, except for their 
grasp upon the rudiments of religion, and they were 
hhable to become religious quacks. Backwoodsmen might 
put up with patent nostrums for a while, and small groups 
of followers devote themselves with a zeal worthy of a 
better cause to such strange cults as those of the Millerites, 
the Shakers and the Mormons, but a healthy growth of 
religion required the assent of the mind as well as of the 
heart. Colporteurs, therefore, were employed by the new 
societies to follow the preachers to the West, and persua- 


112 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. 8. 


sively to distribute religious literature that would make_ 
the people think. 

The general societies were followed, sometimes pre- 
ceded, by denominational publishing houses. The Method- 
ist Book Concern was the earliest of them. It developed 
out of a private enterprise for disseminating the writings 
of John Wesley, and was adopted officially by the denomi- 
nation. Others were local experiments, but soon extended 
to the bounds of the denominations. Pamphlet literature 
was circulated in the interest of denominational tenets, and 
books were issued when the finances permitted. Most of 
the publishing houses found their principal work in sup- 
plying literature for the Sunday schools that were coming 
into existence in increasing numbers. | 

The chief instrument for the education of democracy 
has been the newspaper and the magazine. The periodical 
visit of the printed sheet exerted cumulative force upon 
the minds of its readers, and proved a most effective means 
for the propagation of specific ideas, political, philosophi- 
eal or religious. In religious circles the missionary enter- 
prise created a demand for news sheets. New England 
was issuing state magazines under denominational imprint 
early in the nineteenth century, giving the news of Eng- 
lish foreign missions as well as of American interests, and 
stimulating the American mind to respond to the mission- 
ary idea by the organization of American societies. With- 
in a few years denominational newspapers were in the 
field. Naturally most of this literary activity was in the 
East, but as many as eighteen papers are said to have 
been published west of the mountains in 1832. Certain 
ambitious scholars, attempted the publication of monthly 
or quarterly religious reviews, with articles that appealed 
especially to scholars and cultivated people, but such maga- 
zines were not popular enough to keep them in circulation. 
‘The influence of the religious press was not liberalizing 
. theologically, but it kept alive an interest in the denomi- 
nation and its enterprises, and it provided spiritual nour- 


THE RELIGIOUS MIND IN THE MAKING 113 


ishment to some who otherwise would have gone hungry. 
The expansion of religious ideas was to come through the 
freer instruction of the schools and the influence of an un- 
sectarian press. 

For the religious instruction of the young a more defi- 
nite method was needed than the religious press could 
supply. The religious school with its definite schedules 
and. its concentrated study under the personal guidance of 
a teacher was the only solution. When religion was 
crowded out of the public schools in the East, a Sunday 
school was the logical result. Starting as a philanthropic 
enterprise in England for the instruction of street gamins, 
the Sunday school became in America an organized auxil- 
iary of the church for the religious instruction of the chil- 
dren of church families. Local church initiative was fol- 
lowed by more general societies. 

The earliest Bible study was almost entirely a matter 
of memorizing Scripture, but a new method was introduced 
by which a selection of verses was made and printed with 
questions on the text. Question books were used in the 
classes by the teachers; the pupils were expected to gather 
their information from the Bible. B. F. Jacobs and J..H. 
Vincent, the founder.of the Chautauqua Summer <As- 
sembly, improved the weekly methods of instruction. 
About 1870 a uniform system of weekly lessons was 
adopted by the various denominational publishing houses, 
and denominational newspapers printed comments on the 
lesson. This uniform system extended internationally, 
and worked so well that there was little agitation for its 
improvement for twenty years. But the same lessons were 
not adapted to all ages and all kinds of qualifications of 
the human mind. As secular scholarship improved, the 
Sunday schools found it pushing religious education to 
higher standards, and as religious scholarship became more 
discriminating it was seen that the uniform system and 
the usual order of study helps needed modification. The 
normal training of teachers was begun. Materials for 


114 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


study improved. Local schools tried experiments of their 
own, some of which became adopted widely. Eventually 
the leading denominations found it advisable to appoint 
commissions to examine into the whole subject of religious 
education, and to appoint experts in religious education as 
directors of the subject in state and local organizations. 

They were stimulated to better teaching and adminis- 
tration by the Religious Education Association, which was. 
organized in 1903, and was composed mainly of educators 
and ministers who were urgent for more rapid improve- 
ment. By investigation and publication of reports the 
organization made a worthy contribution to educational 
progress, and the whole subject took on greater dignity 
than it had had from the indifferent quality of most Sun- 
day school work. 

Tentative as were the efforts of religious people to 
broaden their activities, the mere effort was evidence of 
consciences sensitized to human needs. In a period when 
the personal side of religion was emphasized, the will was 
stimulated to undertake enterprises that had important 
social consequences. The belief that all persons were of 
equal value to God, and that it was a human obligation to 
raise depressed individuals or races to a higher level of 
religious faith and ideals, together with the extension of 
education, helped to produce the sturdy democracy that 
vaulted to political power in the days of Andrew Jackson. 

The period after the second war with Great Britain was 
especially productive of real social progress. The nation, 
coming to realize more fully its independence from Euro- 
pean affairs, yielded itself to the processes of growth. 
Gaining rapidly in population, expanding in territory, 
diversifying its occupations, tending swiftly towards 
democracy, it had a new sense of power. At the same time 
the mind of the people was being enriched. Literature 
and art were beginning to flourish. Public libraries were 
founded and museums opened. The inventions that were 
to revolutionize popular habits and methods of industry 


THE RELIGIOUS MIND IN THE MAKING 115 


were producing railroads and steamboats, and presently 
the sewing machine, agricultural machinery, and the 
electric telegraph. The heart and conscience of the people 
were kindling in response to the need of the unfortunate 
and the oppressed. Under such stimulus the religious 
mind became more active. The temper of public dis- 
course softened, the humanitarian note was emphasized, 
and God himself seemed to become more kindly. In cer- 
tain scholarly circles criticism of the old theological sys- 
tem was at work, even upon the Bible, and there was less 
disposition to regard all the traditional dogmas as in- 
fallible. 

In spite of all the efforts that were made for the expan- 
sion and enrichment of religion, ignorance and prejudice 
closed the minds of a great many people. In the South- 
west, where the crude methods of the revivalists had their 
greatest vogue, prejudice was strong against new-fangled 
notions. It was there that sympathizers with untrained 
exhorters organized their own Cumberland Presbytery 
and ordained men without the usual educational qualifica- 
tions. There, too, were the Primitive Baptists who op- 
posed seminaries, Sunday schools, and missions on the 
theory that God needed none of these to convince men of 
sin and to convert them to the way of salvation. It was 
long before that section of the country fell into line and 
organized its own training institutions. 

During the same period unbalanced religionists were 
winning groups of followers in allegiance to certain ob- 
sessions. A Vermont farmer named Miller wrote and 
preacheg the second advent of Christ at a certain date, 
excitable people sold their property and watched with 
tense expectancy for the approaching day and hour. When 
they were disappointed some lost their faith altogether, and 
worldly scorn of the Millerites was inherited by all active 
exponents of the doctrine of the Second Advent. 

An English woman, Ann Lee, came to America and 
taught that the millennium had begun already and that 


116 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. 8. 


Christ had appeared the second time in her, that marriage 
was forbidden, and that all property must be held in 
common. From New York state as a center her propa- 
ganda extended, and communistic settlements of Shakers 
with men and women occupying separate houses were 
started in a number of places from Maine to Ohio. Their 
abrogation of marriage and failure to keep their hold on 
the children of their proselytes made decline inevitable, 
until they are nearly extinct. Numerous communistic ex- 
periments were made, mostly by German sectarians. Some 
of them succeeded for a time, but eventually failed through 
mismanagement, dissension, fanaticism or maladjustment 
to economic and social environment. 

Most of such teachings and experiments as these were 
due to supposed revelations that had come to individuals. 
The belief in spiritual revelation was capitalized by cer- 
tain persons who had unusual insight into the credulity 
of the human mind, if not an abnormal second sight. The © 
Fox sisters introduced the vogue of Spiritualism when by 
rappings and other exciting phenomena they claimed that 
departed spirits were trying to communicate with those 
who were ready to accept their messages. The uncertainty 
of the possibility of such communication and the natural 
love of the occult strengthened the longing of bereaved 
or curious persons to find out more about the spiritual 
world, and Spiritualism for these reasons gained a perma- 
nent place among the religious cults of America. 

Of a higher order were the claims of Emmanuel Swe- 
denborg to a special understanding of the other world. He 
was no necromancer, but a scientist of brilliant mind and 
reputation. So convinced was he of certain special reve- 
lations that he published his experiences to the world, and 
in England and America as well as in his native Sweden 
he found numbers of believers. The Church of the New 
Jerusalem, however, never gained many converts. 

_ Of all the prophets of a special revelation who have 
found opportunity for propaganda in tolerant America 


THE RELIGIOUS MIND IN THE MAKING 117 


the Mormons have gained the greatest repute. American 
in origin, Mormonism has made many converts in Europe. 
Shrewd in finance, it has been able to assist immigrants 
to American headquarters. Playing upon the religious 
credulity of its adherents, it was able to foist polygamy 
upon them as a part of a revealed ecclesiastical and social 
system. Driven out of the Mississippi valley to an un- 
promising wilderness, it has been so economically success- 
ful as to grow fat on the land and to make the desert 
blossom as the rose. In spite of the frown of public opin- 
ion and the opposition of the national Government to its 
practices it has spread into the mountain states of the West 
and has sent its representatives to Washington to sit in the 
deliberations of the national assemblies. By colonization 
and missionary efforts Mormonism makes its way, some- 
times by its religious appeal, at other times by the ma- 
terial advantages that are promised to believers. As an 
immoral propaganda it has been condemned by the social 
mind of America; as an alien religion based on a fraud 
it has been hated by the churches; as an ambitious state 
within a state it has been feared by patriots. In spite of 
opposition it has prospered, and in its section of the coun- 
try it has filled a larger place than any other institution, 
political, social, or religious. 

Protestantism has had a similar fear of the political 
power of the Catholic hierarchy, and of the ecclesiastical 
system that has been modified but not changed in principle 
from that of medieval Europe. With the religious an- 
tagonisms that were consequences of the Protestant Refor- 
mation in Europe firmly fixed in the minds of colonial 
Americans, it was natural that the Protestant colonies 
should be unfriendly to Catholic settlement. Maryland 
was the only colony where they found special opportunity, 
and before long the control of that colony passed to others. 
The acquisition of Louisiana added to the small Catholic 
population of the United States, but Louisiana was remote 
and had no influence upon the religion of the nation. 


118 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. 8. 


After the American colonies acquired their indepen- 
dence the small number of Catholics were encouraged by 
the appointment of a Marylander of good family, John 
Carroll, as prefect apostolic of the church in America 
(1784), and subsequently as bishop. The natural con- 
flict between the authority of the hierarchy and the Ameri- 
can desire for democracy in the local church appeared 
intermittently in the issue of trusteeism. The laity wished 
to keep the church buildings in the hands of their own 
representatives, and to choose and dismiss their own pas- 
tors. Breaking out locally from time to time the issue con- 
tinued to vex the church, but the American spirit was not 
strong enough to change the old system. 

The Catholics suffered at times from an outbreak of 
religious fanaticism, as when the Ursuline convent was 
burned near Boston in 1834, and riots occurred in Phila- 
delphia ten years later. Protestant suspicion showed itself 
in the Know Nothing movement of the mid-century and 
later in the A.P.A, Whenever the church resorted to un- 
American practices, as in the opening of parochial schools 
or a suggestion that they should have a share of public 
school funds, lynx-eyed guardians of the ark tried to 
prevent unholy hands from touching it. 

Catholics had their internal bickerings between rival 
orders and the priesthood, and between nationalities. Dif- 
ficulties thickened with the incoming of immigrant mil- 
lions, though their coming brought a large accession of 
numbers to the churches. The Irish, coming in swarms in 
the forties, were loyal children of the church, and from 
Irish-American stock the church recruited large numbers 
of its clergy. The German migration that followed 
brought many Catholics, but the Scandinavians who came 
next were faithfully Lutheran. National differences were 
felt most keenly in later decades when the French Ca- 
nadians poured into the industrial cities of the northern 
border states, and Poles and Italians came in tidal waves 
from Europe. The census made it possible for Catholics 


THE RELIGIOUS MIND IN THE MAKING 119 


to point with pride to the rapid gain in numbers, even 
though there were large losses through the indifference 
of many immigrants who were glad to slough off all re- 
ligious restraint. The great influx of Europeans tested 
severely the resources of the church in America, but the 
organization set itself valiantly to meet the test, and in 
the fast growing cities Catholic institutions became promi- 
nent. In rural sections Catholics were few in number 
until well into the twentieth century, and small provision 
was made for their needs. 

It is much to the credit of the Catholic church in Amer- 
ica that it has been able to keep its moral control over so 
many millions who naturally responded to the spirit of 
freedom that so permeates this country. Without such 
moral restraint in the period of transition from the old 
to the new millions lost their faith and not a few their 
moral balance; the church aided the others to keep their 
footing. But the Catholic church suffers continually from 
its lack of kinship with the spirit of freedom and democ- 
racy. Its genius is European, not American. Even with 
the training of the parochial schools many young people 
find themselves out of sympathy with the ancient order of 
organization, if not of ritual worship. This has been a 
severe handicap to the Roman Catholic church, as it is 
likely to be to the Greek church as well. As regards the 
relations of Catholic and Protestant, there is less of bigotry 
but no less of a sense of radical difference between them, 
and time seems unable to bring them into harmony, and 
only occasionally into codperation for social ends. 

Although the religion of the American people has been 
nominally Christian, others have shared in the activities 
and responsibilities of American life. Jews were among 
the colonists, and wherever they became numerous enough 
synagogues were established and their religious practices 
observed. Most of the religious leaders came from abroad, 
because. it was not until 1875 that Jewish educational 
institutions were established successfully. The bond 


120 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE UT. S. 


among the congregations was not strong, and it was easy 
for some of them to depart radically from the ancient 
standards and to organize a reform movement that culmi- 
nated in the Society for Ethical Culture. The Jews even- 
tually organized their Young Men’s Hebrew Associations 
on the model of the Christian Associations, and a Chau- 
tauqua Society which functioned as a college extension 
movement. ‘I'he Jews have been conspicuous for their 
philanthropies, particularly among the needy immigrants 
of their own race. 

The increasing influx of Jews and Catholics from 
Europe diversified religion in America, and diverging 
tendencies in Protestant communions tended in the same 
direction. In a country of free thinking like America it 
was inevitable that conflicting opinions should arise inside 
the denominations, and occasionally a section drop off, as 
an iceberg breaks from its parent glacier. Such was the 
division between Old and New School Presbyterians which 
occurred in 1837 and persisted until after the Civil War. 
The Old School constituents maintained the conservative 
theology that was held most rigidly by those of Scottish 
ancestry. Failing to discipline more liberal minds in the 
denomination, a majority in the General Assembly voted 
to disfellowship more than five hundred churches with one 
hundred thousand members. Naturally the victims united 
in defense of their position, and a controversy ensued in- 
side the Presbyterian family that weakened its position in 
the country at large and contributed nothing to the devel- 
opment of the denomination. The Civil War minimized 
theological differences in the presence of militant polities, 
and parties coalesced among the Presbyterians north of 
Mason and Dixon’s line. 

Congregationalists were debating theological problems 
during the same period, though they had lost their most 
liberal members in the Unitarian defection. No denomi- 
nation could escape altogether the growing tendency to 
liberalism in theology, and Congregationalists were more 


THE RELIGIOUS MIND IN THE MAKING 121 


open-minded than most Christians. The New England 
theology was still strong, and the strictly orthodox party 
organized a new seminary in Connecticut to counteract the 
teaching of a modified Calvinism at Yale. The flexibility 
of organization kept the denomination from such schisms 
as among the Presbyterians. Baptists and Methodists, who 
were divided by the issue over slavery, suffered little from 
internal doctrinal differences, but Baptists and non-Bap- 
tists waged a wordy warfare on the subject of baptism. 
Episcopalians were vexed by party differences between 
High and Low Church adherents, and a few impatient 
radicals withdrew and organized the Reformed Episcopal 
Church in 1873. 

In general the period between 1830.and_1880 was 
marked. by a liberalizing tendency in the church mind, as 
it felt the influence of the currents of contemporary 
thought, but in underlying convictions and in denomi- 
national alignment the American people maintained with 
remarkable fidelity their European heritage. Progress 
was most marked in the territorial expansion of Chris- 
tianity both in America and in pagan countries, and in 
the successful operation of the principle of voluntarism in 
the great missionary enterprises and in the maintenance 
of local churches everywhere in America. Outside of the 
Catholic church, where all attempts at lay control had 
been baffled, the members of the churches enjoyed demo- 
cratic direction of their affairs and in the enjoyment of 
self-government the more willingly contributed to church 
support. As in the nation at large, those were years of 
increasing gain to the churches, but less in intellectual 
virility than in social and institutional access of power. 


VIII. RATIONALIZING RELIGION 


Mrp-Vicrortan religion in America, as represented by 
the bulk of the Protestant churches, was still soundly or- 
thodox in its faithfulness to the theology of the Reforma- 
tion, Except for a few scholars among the clergy, church 
people were not aware that a revolution in thought was 
going on which would affect profoundly the conclusions of 
that theology and would alter the outlook of Christian 
people upon history and the Bible, nature and society, the 
universe and God. The chief interest of evangelical, 
preachers and ecclesiastically active lay leaders was in 
the problem of interesting people in personal religion and 
so bringing them into voluntary affiliation with the church. 
Thus at the same time they might save souls and build 
up the church. 

American religion tended to be practical rather than 
intellectual like the other interests of the time. That was 
the temptation of the churches, They measured their 
success by their income in contributions received and 
members added, in the number of new churches and Sun- 
day schools, and in the increase in average attendance 
upon their services. Even ministers were appraised ac- 
cording to their achievements in these respects rather than 
in the less tangible results of spiritual purpose and energy 
that had been generated. This pragmatic emphasis dis- 
counted theological thinking. Whether because of a dis: 
taste for hard thinking, or because other interests weighed 
more in the social mind, it became impossible to arouse 
most people to consider seriously the merits of any wrought 
out system of thought, like the New England theology. 
Religious people took unhesitatingly what the Reforma- 

122 


RATIONALIZING RELIGION 123 © 


tion handed down, if only it had the Protestant stamp, 
whether it was the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity, the Au- 
gustinian theory of man’s fall and its consequences, 
Dante’s dire fancies regarding hell, or Calvin’s insistence 
on the absolute sovereignty of God. 

The attitude towards life on this planet. was nota hope- 
ful one. The present world was destined to destruction 
that might arrive over night. The Christian’s treasure 
was laid up for him in another world toward which his 
thoughts turned, at least on Sundays. Sunday was to be 
kept as a holy day, free from desecration; to this end Sun- 
day legislation was passed and efforts were made to enforce 
the law. During the secular days of the week it was per- 
missible to yield to the instinct of acquisitiveness, and by 
working hard to accumulate a competency to keep one 
from the poorhouse, where few but the half-wits had to 
go. America offered an unparalleled opportunity to every- 
body to make good in the business of the material, and it. 
was convenient to believe that God would not begrudge any 
man material success, if only he attended to the business 
of the spiritual on Sunday. This philosophy was not put 
so naively, but the theory was tacitly held. 

The energy that was applied on weekdays to secular 
interests was not remitted on Sunday in religious duties. 
Americans of the nineteenth century were on the whole a 
churchgoing people, at least in the older sections of the 
country. In most cases the habit had been ingrained by 
pious ancestors. Everywhere the element of sociability 
entered in to draw people to the meeting-house. Two, 
even three scheduled services of worship, besides the Sun- 
day school session, were in vogue in New England, and 
many persons felt an obligation to attend them all. The 
old Puritan rigor, which required families to remain at 
home quietly in the intervals between meetings, and ex- 
pected even children to spend their time in religious read- 
ing, was relaxed, even in New England, but conservative 
parents were cautious in their grants of liberty. 


124 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE JU. 6%. 


The disposition to distinguish sharply between the sa- 
cred and the secular tended to divorce religion from 
every-day life, and to put the lives of people into separate 
compartments. In medieval Europe religion was an in- 
timate part of routine life. Superstitious though much of 
religion was, it was not shoved aside into one day. Theo- 
retically the religious American carried his religion into 
life. Conscientiously he conducted family prayers, cul- 
tivated the virtues of private life, refrained from such 
vices as lying, profanity, gambling and unchastity. He 
fully believed that religion should fruit in righteous living, 
but he interpreted both narrowly. He had not learned to 
apply religion to every situation as a necessary part of it, 
as something that had to do, for example, with raising bet- 
ter wheat, as well as refraining from swearing at the 
horses that did the plowing or the men who harvested 
the crop. Religion was not a constructive factor in occu- 
pation and achievement. rom the point of view of the 
liberal critic religion needed to be less of an ecclesiastical 
system and more of an attitude towards life, less of a cult 
\and more of a culture of the whole personality. It needed 
to be rationalized, that minds might think through their 
religious problems without the bondage to tradition and 
relate themselves to the universe that was unfolding before 
the eyes of the scientist in an amazing way. It needed 
to be socialized, so that men would see that philanthropy 
and missions were not an equivalent for a religion that 
should permeate business, industry, education, recreation, 
and all the permanent social relations that human beings 
sustain in present life. It needed to be spiritualized so 
that men would feel the presence of the Divine im every- 
day life and in all life so keenly that, if a man were 
religious at all, he would work to do the divine will 
and rejoice, not fear, in the consciousness of that 
Presence. 

The development of such rationalization, socialization, 
and spiritualization was in process in the decades that 


RATIONALIZING RELIGION 125 


followed the Civil War. The intellectual movement came 
first. 

The new era of religious thinking was the product of 
forces that were vigorously at work tearing down struc- 
tures in every department of thought and building new 
ones. Religion could not be kept in a compartment of 
its own, unaffected by the conclusions that were being 
reached in other fields of study. Religion was to pass 
through the rationalizing process. Here in America as 
elsewhere religion had been mainly a product of feeling. 
Fears were aroused or feelings enlisted, and the individual 
gave willing response to the impulse that moved him. The 
revivalist relied on the emotional appeal. For the rest a 
man acquired a traditional belief from childhood, which 
remained constant in most cases. The man of the street 
and the pew accepted contentedly the literal word of the 
Bible or the interpretation of his church as sufficient au- 
thority for him. Only the exceptional man philosophizes 
or ventures out upon the sea of phenomena in an effort to 
add to scientific knowledge. Yet, when new ideas are 
thrusting themselves upon public attention through the 
school and the press, even orthodox people cannot escape 
contagion. That was the situation in the nineties, when 
the conclusions of the nineteenth century thought filtered 
through to the rank and file of thoughtful church people. 

Religious thinking among scholars had been in process 
cf change ever since the Reformation, though the layman 
had not been aware of it. As there was a line of descent) 
of orthodox theology from Calvin and Luther, so there was | 
a line of descent of liberal theology from the rationalists 
of the Reformation. 

Among the experimental forms pushed out in the process 
of Protestant thought was one that stressed the ability of 
man to use his reason in religion. This was Socinianism. 
Socinus was an Italian, brought up in the stronghold of 
humanism, and he carried humanistic ideas in religion 
to Poland, where he attracted to himself the free-thinking 


126 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. &. 


element among Protestants. He was a pioneer of that 
modernism in religion which denies the depravity and 
worthlessness of man, and defends his dignity and rights 
before God and his ability to approach God and to inter- 
pret his will. Socinians believed in a God who did not need. 
to be propitiated, but was just towards man, and rejected _ 
the idea that Christ made a substitutionary atonement, by 
which alone human beings could be saved. This carried 
with it a denial of the Trinity, a denial that provoked 
the hostility of other Protestant sects. 

The Socinian sap coursed nevertheless through the stem 
of European religious thought. It produced a humanistic 
growth in Holland, which branched out as Arminianism, 
a protest against the extreme Calvinism of the Swiss and 
Dutch, but not so radical as Socinianism. It spread to 
England where it produced a number of varieties of hu- 
manistic thinking, such as Arminianism, Arianism and 
Deism... The connecting thought that runs through them 
all is the worth of man and his moral and intellectual 
power to find out God. In its extreme radicalism it passed 
from Deism into Atheism; in its milder form it united 
with the evangelicalism of the General Baptists and the 
Methodists.. In its normal development it produced 
Unitarianism. | 

Unitarianism appeared in both old and New England 
in the eighteenth century. It was inevitable that the stern, 
rigid system of Calvinistic theology should producea~ 
reaction. Certain thinkers could not believe that man was 
a helpless creature, crushed like a worm under the heel of 
an angry God. They could not believe that every man 
must approach God like a cringing criminal, only to be 
admitted to his presence by an Advocate who could mollify 
the divine wrath. Man was worth something to God. 
God had made him, and he had his rights in relation to 
God. Doctrines like these, that seemed blasphemous to the 
orthodox Calvinist, were held and preached in Boston be- 
fore 1800, yet the modern thinkers were reluctant to 


RATIONALIZING RELIGION 127 


break with the conservatives among whom they had been 
brought up. Both parties continued for a time in church 
fellowship with each other. Both believed in the same 
Bible and in the same Christian discipleship. The liberals 
desired a free conscience from its bondage to antique the- 
ories, to allow a freer interpretation of the Bible and the 
teachings of Christ, and this desire had in it the seeds of 
ultimate separation. The Episcopal society worshiping 
in King’s Chapel, Boston, had been demoralized during 
the Revolution, and after the contest was over the liberal 
element in the church was strong enough to call and ordain 
a liberal minister, the youthful James Freeman. He made 
radical changes in the liturgy to conform to liberal opin- 
ions regarding the Trinity, and brought into existence the 
first specifically Unitarian church in New England. 
Episcopalians were not vitally affected, however, in other 
places, but Congregational churches speedily began to an- 
nounce themselves as Unitarian. Worcester, Portland, 
and Plymouth, where the old Mayflower church joined in 
the defection, became Unitarian centers. In 1805 David 
Tappan, teacher of Calvinistic theology at Harvard, was 
succeeded by Henry Ware, well known for his liberal 
opinions. This event led to a more outspoken expression 
of opinion on both sides. In 1808 the Calvinists estab- 
lished a theological school of their own at Andover. T'wo 
years later Park Street church, Boston, was opened under 
the shadow of Beacon Hill to defend the faith of the 
fathers. In 1819 a divinity school with a Unitarian fac- 
ulty was established at Harvard, affiliated with the college. 
Liberal organs were started, a publication society organ- 
ized. The American Unitarian Association was created 
in 1825. 

At last Unitarians were driven to avow their belief from 
the pulpit and through the press. Munisters and congre- 
gations were compelled to choose their place. One by one 
the churches declared themselves, until a hundred and 
twenty-five, four-fifths of them in Massachusetts, had be- 


128 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


come definitely Unitarian. Among these were all the 
Congregational churches of Boston except the Old South 
and Park Street, and most of the oldest churches of the 
Commonwealth. The most eminent men of the State 
sympathized with the movement. Wealth and culture were 
on its side. Under these conditions it is not strange that 
the Unitarians looked for an extensive enlargement of their 
influence and power. In 1818 the Unitarians secured a 
legal decision that recognized the legal right of a majority 
of the parish to control the church property, whether mem- 
bers of the church or not. By this means many meeting- 
houses and endowments passed into the hands of those who 
were not in sympathy with a majority of the actual church 
members. In all ninety-six churches were lost to Trini- 
tarian Congregationalism. 

In 1819 William Ellery Channing preached an epoch- 
making sermon in Baltimore, and became the recognized 
leader of Unitarianism in America. ‘Henceforth, for 
good or ill, Liberalism—ranging in degree from the Arian- 
ism of Channing to the Rationalism of Parker—was a 
factor to be taken account of in all estimates of New Eng- 
land’s religious life.” Henceforth the doctrine of the 
dignity of man with divine possibilities wrapped up in 
his nature was to be set over against the theory of total 
depravity and the Fall; of man working out his own sal- 
vation through character culture rather than accepting the 
atonement of a Divine Mediator; of the unity of God in- 
stead of the Trinity; of divine immanence more emphatic 
than transcendence; of the importance of life here rather 
than preparation for a life beyond. The schism had be- 
come complete. 

The working free of the principle of intellectual ca- 
pacity and integrity is a vital part of the history of religion 
in America. The principle has suffered from misinterpre- 
tations. It has been represented by small groups, or by 
free lance individuals, like Theodore Parker, who have 
spoken unadvisedly. It has had to struggle against the 


RATIONALIZING RELIGION 129 


champions of the doctrine of a fixed deposit of revealed 
truth which is necessary to salvation, a theory held over 
from the Catholic church by those who believed that the 
closed mind was the divine ideal for human kind. It has 
nevertheless fermented the social mind through the proc- 
esses of scientific investigation and education until it has 
permeated with its principles the current thought about 
religion. 

Unitarianism was only an early phase of the tendency 
towards rationalizing religion. In proportion to the size 
of its membership the humanizing influence of Unitarian- 
ism was remarkably strong, but the sect did not expand 
except among liberal-minded people in Eastern New Eng- 
Jand and their kin elsewhere. Beginning as a protest 
against Calvinism, it owed its positive creed to certain 
eminent leaders like Channing and Emerson. Channing 
proclaimed the innate worth of every man, and logically 
became a champion of the freedom of the slave. Emerson 
preached the immanence of God. He led people to think 
of their religion as a very real, practical thing; to think 
of God as an unseen but effective Presence working out 
his will in nature and in man. 

When New England Congregationalism had sloughed 
off Unitarianism it might have been expected to remain 
true to Calvinism. But the spirit of the age was against 
it, and individuals who were thinking in new categories 
in history and science and ethics, could not continue to 
think in the old ways of religion. The sap of modernism 
was running in the old trunk as well as in the new 
branches. Life was expanding in politics, in society. It 
was reflected in literature, in philanthropy, in movements 
for social reconstruction. It was beating against prison 
bars everywhere. And New England theology was one 
of the prisons. 

Horace Bushnell was the apostle of progress in ortho- 
dox circles. He championed the cause of the children, 
who had been cursed by Calvinism, treated as tainted with 


130 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


sin, and helpless to be saved from eternal damnation, when 
he declared that the child was endowed with a moral life 
which could be cultivated as he grew, so that he would 
never know himself other than as a Christian, becoming 
ever more conscious of the God within him as together 
they worked out his salvation. It was the duty of the 
church to cherish and cultivate this budding flower of 
religion in every child, to lead him to a fuller under- 
standing of the divinity within him, to train him as a 
child of God, not threaten him as a child of sin and an 
object of God’s wrath. Bushnell discarded the old view 
of the atonement, denying that Christ took upon himself 
the sufferings of humanity that he might reconcile God to 
man, declaring rather that the work of Christ was to recon- 
cile man to God, whose love was infinite. 

Against ill health and the bitter hostility of most of his 
fellow Congregationalists Bushnell contended for a more 
wholesome ethical faith, holding to the Trinitarian belief, 
though explaining the doctrine differently from the con- 
servatives, but blasting out from the adamant quarry of 
the New England theology rough-hewn stones for the 
foundations of a new and better system. Bushnell was 
the New England pioneer of modern liberal orthodoxy. 

From the justice and mercy of God modern Christian 
thought moved on to an emphasis upon his love. It was 
unreasonable to believe that the heart of a God whom 
Jesus Christ called Father could be as stern as Calvinistic 
theology made out. Ministers remembered that the par- 
able of the Prodigal Son was in the New Testament, and 
they began to preach forgiving love as the central quality 
of Divinity. Decades earlier individuals had proclaimed 
“the larger hope” that the thought of such a God war- 
ranted. Enough of them had thus reacted against the 
hopeless doctrines of predestination and future punish- 
ment to organize Universalist churches. Universalism 
stood for the extreme belief that the loving Father would 
not permit any of his children to perish, that somehow 


RATIONALIZING RELIGION 131 


he would find a way to win them all to himself. In this 
comfortable hope it was easy to minimize the importance 
of sin, and the orthodox spoke against the doctrine as 
dangerous, but the emphasis upon divine love passed over 
into orthodox circles, as the humanistic emphasis of the 
Unitarians proved contagious. 

Henry Ward Beecher. from his influential pulpit in 
Brooklyn became the leading exponent of this doctrine of 
divine love. The emphasis of his preaching was the result 
of a personal experience, which he related in these words: 
“Tt pleased God to reveal to my wandering soul the idea 
that it was his nature to love a man in his sins for the 
sake of helping him out of them; that he did not do it out 
of compliment to Christ, or to a law, or a plan of salva- 
tion, but from the fulness of his great heart; that he was 
a being not made mad by sin, but sorry; that he was not 
furious with wrath towards the sinner, but pitied him— 
in short that he felt towards me as my mother felt towards 
me, to whose eyes my wrongdoing brought tears, who never 
pressed me so close to her as when I had done wrong, and 
who would fain with her yearning love lift me out of 
trouble. . . . And when I found that it was Christ’s na- 
ture to lift men out of weakness to strength, out of im- 
purity to goodness, out of everything low and debasing to 
superiority, I felt that I had found a God.” The love of 
God revealed in Christ became Beecher’s central theme, 
but he became also a champion of a theology that accepted 
the conclusions of modern science, and seemed to many the 
arch-heretic of his time. Lyman Abbott, his successor in 
Plymouth pulpit, was destined to be the guide of many 
conservative church people into an understanding and 
appreciation of the new discoveries of science and their 
application to Christian thought. 

The acquisition of knowledge about the universe was 
going on with astounding rapidity in the nineteenth cen- 
tury. The astronomer was piercing the heavens with new 
and better instruments, and was discovering the immen- 


132 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


sity of starry space. The biologist was analyzing with 
his microscope the tiniest forms of life and discovering 
laws that bind the whole animal world together. The 
chemist and the physicist were unravelling marvellous 
secrets of matter and energy. As the discoveries of Gali- 
leo and Copernicus and Newton had changed human con- 
ceptions about the solar system, so the telescope, the spec- 
troscope, and the microscope in the hands of patient scien- 
tists profoundly altered all previous conceptions of present 
and future life. 

The first and most far-reaching result of scientific study 
was the demonstration of the power of the human reason 
to get back of phenomena and formulate laws and prin- 
ciples that were more than guess work, far more depend- 
able than philosophers and theologians had been able to 
determine. The nineteenth century proved once for all 
that the mind of man, limited though it might be, was 
qualified to know and interpret God and his works. The 
scientific mind found itself in conflict with the theological 
mind. The old ideas did not surrender without a struggle, 
a struggle that has revived with new vigor since the 
World War, but it was a losing fight for the old, because 
the new was in harmony with the conclusions that were 
being reached in all intellectual circles. 


A second result was the discovery of the unity of life. 


and law, that everywhere in the universe, in the most dis- 
tant nebula, in the tiniest amceba, and in the mind of man, 
God worked through law, causes had their regular effects, 
life was always in process. This dependability of God and 
the universe ran counter to the Calvinistic idea of the 
arbitrary will of God. Instead of man’s being in the grip 
of a wilful deity, he was hedged about by a natural law 
that seemed at first relentless, until one learned to co- 
operate with law. 

_ A third result was the theory of evolution as an explana- 
tion of the natural process that was evidently the great 
fact of the universe. The constant change that was going 


RATIONALIZING RELIGION 133 


on even in the tiniest atom was not a purposeless flux. 
The restless energy of nature was moulding and remould- 
ing its products for the development of something better. 
Through the influences of heredity and environment the 
inner capacity was unfolding to a fuller, richer growth. 
This idea of evolution was not new. Greek philosophers 
had held it as a theory, but it remained for the era of 
scientific investigation to demonstrate it. It required a 
mass of scientific data to produce a definite hypothesis. 
When Charles Darwin published his epoch-making ‘“Ori- 
gin of Species” in 1859 he supplied a key to the half- 
understood mass of scientific facts, suggesting as a hy- 
pothesis the theory of natural selection as the probable 
method by which the process went on. His explanation 
of its working in the world made it possible to formulate 
a system of universal law and to classify knowledge so 
abundantly acquired. But the doctrine of evolution im- 
pinged upon the long-accepted ideas of the church. Those 
things which had been regarded as fundamental in the 
creeds were called in question—the creation of man, the 
origin of sin, the reality of the supernatural. The author- 
ity of Scripture was seriously threatened, and men began 
to feel the foundation of their faith slipping away from 
them. If evolution should be accepted as the method of 
creation then the earth was countless ages old, and life 
had been developing through countless forms for incon- 
ceivable xons of time. Geology proclaimed it, and paleon- 
tology and embryology buttressed it with infallible proofs. 
But if this were so, the teachings of the first chapter of 
Genesis could not be historically correct, and where was 
the authority of the inspired book? If evolution should 
be accepted, then man had been ascending the ladder of 
progress from the beginning of his animal birth, and the 
story of the fall was a myth. Anthropology declared it, 
and archeology and history bore witness to the facts. 
But if this was so, where was the theology of Calvinism, 
and whither would this strange teaching lead? Evolu- 


134 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


tion was producing a revolution in theology. After a little 
spiritually minded men who were scholars as well at- 
tempted to harmonize what seemed to be in conflict. 
Then it began to appear that the conflict was rather be- 
tween science and theology than between science and reli- 
gion. It was a matter of interpretation. The great 
truths of religion that were back of all the theologies 
might have been misunderstood but they were unchanged. 
Theologies had changed with the passing centuries. Ro- 
manism had given way in all the most enlightened coun- 
tries to Protestantism; Calvinism had been crumbling 
before the more hopeful and more truly evangelistic 
Arminianism of a later day. It might be possible to 
reconstruct theology in the light of modern science. 

The new thought gave a tremendous impulse to the 
progressive element in the American churches, but it 
aroused the bitter hostility of those who saw the citadels 
of the faith threatened. Unfortunately the attitude of 
science encouraged the hostility. Many scientists were 
so enamored of their facts and hypotheses that they claimed 
too much. They seemed to take pleasure in the destruc- 
tion of that which was old. They inclined towards a 
materialistic explanation of all phenomena to the exclu- 
sion of spiritual reality altogether. The result was a war 
of words between the scientists and the theologians not 
very creditable to either party, a war that ended in the 
discomfiture of the reactionary theologians, but in the 
enlightenment of the scientists regarding the validity and 
value of religion, and presently they found that even the 
hypothesis of Darwin needed to take account of the muta- 
tions of de Vries, that physics had to be reconstructed on 
the basis of energy rather than of mechanism, and that if 
not soul at least personality in man had to be reckoned 
with in a study of ultimate values. 

Fortunately there were open-minded men in both camps, 
scientists who did not lose their sense of balance, and 
theologians who could assimilate and harmonize knowl- 


RATIONALIZING RELIGION 135 


edge. The rationalizing process went on in the American 
churches. Ministers spoke more freely in the pulpits, men 
and women who went to college listened appreciatively to 
the new interpretations. Even the theological schools, built 
as strongholds of orthodoxy, were affected. Andover The- 
ological Seminary, founded by the Congregationalists to 
offset the Unitarian defection, the leading school of the 
denomination in the country, became the seat of a con- 
troversy that almost wrecked the school. There Edwards 
A. Park, the last of the old guard of the New England 
theology and a giant in intellect, was the defender of 
Calvinistic orthodoxy. But Andover could not escape the 
currents of modern thought that were at their flood, and 
though no very radical tendencies appeared on examina- 
tion, it was apparent from Progressive Orthodoxy, pub- 
lished by the faculty, that new ideas were in the ascendant. 

The theory of development had ramifications in the field 
of religion that threatened other startling consequences. 
Literary and historical critics had long been studying the 
origins of the books of the Bible. They were showing it 
to be a library of history and poetry, sage wisdom and 
fiction, containing a wealth of spiritual truth, but by no 
means to be regarded as an armory of proof texts for the 
support of dogma, or as a cyclopedia of scientific, historical 
or philosophical knowledge. Applying the theory of evo- 
lution, the critic found in the Old Testament a record of 
the development of the Hebrew religious consciousness 
through many centuries, and in the New Testament a 
crowning revelation of the possibilities of spiritual devel- 
opment in Jesus of Nazareth. Among liberal Christians 
the Bible took its place alongside the sacred books of 
other religions as the product of the best thought of the 
race. A study of the human mind in the light of the new 
knowledge soon produced a psychology of religion, and a 
study of comparative religion made plain the contribution 
of other faiths than Christianity, and modified the attitude 
of foreign missionaries to the religions of the people among 


136 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. &. 


whom they taught. A study of the religious nature and of 
religious history revealed the importance of experience as 
the true foundation of theology and of reason as the in- 
terpreter of experience. Religious experience became the 
subject of study in the philosophical laboratory as well as 
the theme of the evangelist in the meeting-house. William 
James at Harvard College brought together and published 
“Varieties of Religious Experience,” a very popular book 
at the close of the century. 

For a time the new theology was open to the double 
charge that it was indefinite and demoralizing. It gave 
the mind no definite system to grasp, but left it to flounder. 
In minimizing the emotional element in religion, appeal- 
ing to an enlightened conscience, calling upon the intellect 
in calm, cold deliberation to debate the claims of religion, 
the warmth of affection and exuberance of feeling that 
characterized the “seasons of refreshing” that the churches 
had enjoyed, was destroyed. Those churches that de- 
pended on the stirrings of the Spirit in the former chan- 
nels were least receptive to the new teaching. It was 
years before it began to appear that recruits to the churches 
were more intelligent and less mercurial in their religious 
loyalties, and that the gains in religious essentials were 
more than the losses. It was quite patent that young 
people who were saturated with scientific teaching would 
lose religion altogether without radical readjustments, 
and, that church leaders, if intelligent and honest, must. 
take sympathetic cognizance of the new thought. 

Gradually the content of the new theology took shape. 
Wise interpreters in speech and writing explained the 
meaning of religion in terms of the vital and dynamic 
rather than of the mechanical and static. They did not 
translate their faith into dogmas to be fitted into creeds, * 
but they tried to clarify ideas that they might serve as a 
basis for constructive service, for faith without works was_ 
dry and dead. In substance their theology was, first, a 
belief in the immanence of God. God is not an absentee 


RATIONALIZING RELIGION 137 


God directing a machine from without, but a God indwell- 
ing in his creation, perpetually refashioning the universe 
as the expression of his thought, manifesting himself 
through nature, through history, and through the heart 
and brain of man in all ages; quickening the soul of hu- 
manity in the individual and in the mass; leading man 
ever upward through love and sacrifice toward the ideal 
of humanity revealed in the perfect Christ. And the 
evolutionist, seeking to codperate with God in this uplift 
of humanity, “believes in religion not as a creed, a ritual, 
or a church order, which are at the best but the instru- 
ments of religion, but as self-control, righteousness, rev- 
erence, hope, love,—the life of God in the soul of 
man.” 

In the second place the new theology emphasized law 
as God’s method of working. There is a revaluation of 
reason in religion. There is a feeling that miracle, which 
is a phenomenon transcending our knowledge of nature and 
human experience, is not supernaturalism breaking over 
law, but an act of God that could be explained if our un- 
derstanding of divine law was large enough. The new 
theology tends to deny any chasm between the natural and 
the supernatural, such as the warfare between science and 
religion laid stress upon. God is the center of both 
spheres; if there is any distinction between them it is 
that the supernatural is the outer sphere that does not 
come within the region of our sense perceptions. 

Thirdly, the new theology humanized Jesus Christ. 
Not that it stripped him of divinity, but it made his rela- 
tions to human beings more real. The interest in his 
relation to God removed into the background. The meta- 
physical definition seemed unimportant. In a unique 
sense Christ is Son of God, infinitely removed from sin- 
ning man, but for all practical purposes he is one of us. 
Present interest centers on the Christ of history and the 
Christ of experience. Biblical criticism is in large meas- 
ure a process going on in an effort to get at Jesus of Naza- 


188 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


reth back of the garments woven for him by theology and 
even by the gospel writers. The modern Christian wants 
to know the deeds of kindness that he wrought and the 
words of wisdom that he spoke, and to have an insight 
into his wonderful personality. His divinity is spoken 
of as of character rather than of being. Similarly with 
the Christ of experience. Men want to feel the spirit of 
Christ touching their lives and warming their hearts 
with his glow; they care less for a series of articles of 
faith about him. They want to know personally that 
he is risen, not because there is evidence for it as an 
historical fact alone. This is the attitude of the new 
theology. 

In the fourth place, the new theology reinterpreted the_ 
work of Christ. It thought of him as the truest interpre- 
tation of God. Old Testament writers caught glimpses of 
the meaning of deity; Jesus unveiled the character of 
God. All revelation is the picture that is presented to the 
human -mind, it may be through the channel of nature, 
through Scripture or through human speech. Because 
Jesus knew God and men supremely well he was su- 
premely able to reveal. He is the medium of atonement 
also, but the new theology discarded the old theories of 
atonement. The Son had no need to propitiate a just and 
angry God. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto 
himself. By the law of his loving nature he sacrificed 
himself that men might love him. The death of Christ 
is significant because it was the culminating act of a life 
of sacrifice, but his life is most important. Atonement is 
reconciliation; it is accomplished by the impact of the 
personality of Jesus upon the heart of the individual, and 
it is complete when the individual becomes at ene with 
God. Christ is an atonement for sin to bring man into a 
larger life. The idea of salvation changes. According 
to the new thought salvation is not from a place of tor- 
ment but from a state of sin; not always from the bad to 
the good, but from satisfaction with a lesser good to a 


RATIONALIZING RELIGION 139 


yearning for a higher good; from spiritual inertia or even 
atrophy to life and a more abundant life. 

Out of this grew the new eschatology. The future is 
another word for opportunity. Christ may come in 
visible presence; it is certain that he is here now invisibly. 
Heaven and hell may be real places; it is certain that they 
are states of consciousness. Salvation may bring the in- 
dividual into greater happiness, but the goal of life is 
ever larger opportunity for service in God’s kingdom. 
That kingdom finds its place in the sphere of social rela- 
tionships. Eschatology is to many persons another name 
for social ethics. 

It is not to be supposed that the conclusions of the new 
theology became fixed or generally accepted. The rank 
and file of men had as little interest in the conclusions of 
theology as in scientific hypotheses or the arguments of 
international law. As a Salvation Army writer has said: 
“They care no more for higher criticism than for higher 
mathematics.” But the more thoughtful people were mov- 
ing with impressive unanimity to most of these conclu- 
sions. Unity is the key word of modern thought. God 
is a unitary force operating in a universe. All life is one, 
and the line between the human and the divine is hard to 
draw, if not as imaginary as a line of geometry. Nature 
is the projection of God’s thought into the realm of the 
visible; man is the pygmy expression of the possibilities 
inherent in vital existence; he is to God as the electron is 
to the infinite force of divine immanence. Jesus Christ 
revealed the degree of union that is possible between man 
and God. All history is the story of progress toward 
harmony, mainly unconscious, but none the less real. The 
struggle of the future is to be an effort to harmonize 
rival factions among men, to bring nature and man into 
constructive relations instead of the endurance of a pain 
economy, and to put man en rapport with God. He who 
strives to interpret God, to explain the workings of nature, 
or to reconcile social groups, with the thrill of this con- 


140 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. §&. 


ception in his heart, is applying the new theology to the 
needs of his own time. With these thoughts current in 
the church mind American religion was in process of 
rationalization. 


IX. SOCIALIZING RELIGION 


Mip-Viorori1an religion in America was conventional 
in method and organization in a period when social life 
was changing rapidly. After the appendix of slavery 
had been removed from the body politic, and the patient 
had recovered from the operation, the American nation 
entered upon a period of renewed prosperity. The eigh- 
ties and nineties make up a period of rapidly expanding 
business and ‘industry. New inventions were revolution- 
izing economic and social life. People were leaving the 
country for the town by the thousand; immigrants were 
coming from Europe by the million. Cities sprawled out 
into suburbs, bedrooms of the cities’ business people, while 
the factory workers crowded into flats and tenements. 
The integrity of family life was threatened by the new de- 
mand for working women and by the tenement, the lodg- 
ing house, and the apartment hotel. It cost more to live, 
and young people delayed marriage. The freedom and 
the new economic opportunity for women tended to in- 
crease divorce. The city afforded better facilities for 
education, wider opportunity for culture and recreation, 
but education, recreation, government, aesthetics, morals 
were becoming commercialized. The spirit of individu- 
alism controlled the city; business was its central interest. 
The city’s heart needed religion, but religion was becom- 
ing dwarfed, crowded out, as the church building was 
dwarfed and crowded by the towering office building. 
Catholics were hard pressed to provide church accommo- 
dations for European immigrants, and Protestants failed 
to adapt themselves to downtown conditions, and. followed 
the American people to the residential wards and the sub- 
urbs. 

141 


142 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


The influx of foreigners accustomed to making Sun- 
day a holiday tended to relax the rigor of Sunday in 
Eastern cities, as that rigor had been relaxed already in 
the West. Sunday excursions on the railroads and steam- 
boats, recreation parks at the seashore or on the electric 
ear lines, the well-padded Sunday newspapers, were all 
offering counter attractions to people who were accus- 
tomed to go to church. In this situation the church needed 
to re-define religion and readjust its methods, but it was 
slow to learn. The minister preached on conventional sub- 
jects from an orthodox point of view, pointing out the 
duty of individuals to cultivate a saving faith, and per- 
suading young people after the manner of their parents to 
assume the responsibility of membership for the good of 
their souls and for the upbuilding of the church. The 
Sunday school and the midweek prayer meeting helped to 
stimulate an interest in religion, but it was growing harder 
to arouse even the temporary interest that a revival could 
generate, and fewer church leaders believed in revivals. 
Occasionally itinerant evangelists like Moody and Sankey, 
held mass meetings in the larger cities, and with preaching 
and gospel song won recruits and recovered deserters 
for the church. 

Up to 1890 most city churches seemed to thrive. People 
making new homes in the city added strength to their 
membership and financial resources. Sunday schools — 
numbered their pupils by the hundred. Benevolent con- 
tributions increased. Mission chapels were started in 
growing sections of the city. Then conditions began to 
change. A shifting population drifted into the churches 
and out again. The more successful people moved out into 
the suburbs. Young people from the country crowding 
into the boarding houses, and immigrants new to Ameri- 
can ways, required a different method of approach from 
that which had been in vogue. The family church seemed 
no longer universally suited to the new conditions. In 
the suburbs the churches were more prosperous but not 


SOCIALIZING RELIGION 143 


progressive, little disposed to concern themselves with the 
city problem or to adopt any but routine methods for 
themselves. 

Religion downtown was conspicuous for its absence. 
Occasionally a religious group undertook to supply re 
ligion in homeopathic quantity by planting a mission in an 
especially degraded district. The purpose was not to 
improve the community, but to save individuals from 
shipwreck of their lives. Such a mission as that of Jerry 
McAuley in New York saved poor outcasts and kept them 
steady through the influence of its nightly meetings, but 
the evangelistic mission made no impression on the un- 
churched mass. Another evangelistic experiment was the 
“temple” or tabernacle, or a tent on a vacant lot in the 
summer. These were designed to catch and hold the drift- 
ing population of the city. Sometimes the objective was 
a particular class like sailors or immigrants, sometimes 
the American working people. These assembly places 
had free sittings for individuals instead of family pews, 
popular programs of music and sermonette, but they made 
little impression on the city’s life. Their greatest ser- 
vice was in holding in church connection persons who 
would have drifted away from the churches when they 
were away from home. 

The failure of the church to adapt itself to the growing 
city made it inevitable that religion should find some other 
avenue of approach. In 1851 the Young Men’s Christian 
Association was adopted from England as a means of 
keeping under religious influence the thousands of young 
men who were seeking their fortunes in the cities. Its 
popularity was evident by a growth in membership from 
108,000 to 232,000 in the decade between 1883 and 1893. 
The Young Women’s Christian Association was organized 
with a similar purpose for the young women employed 
in stores and offices. Religious meetings were prominent 
at first in the programme of these organizations, but soon 
buildings were erected with reception rooms and assembly 


144 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S$. 


halls, libraries and gymnasiums, and evening classes, lec- 
tures and concerts provided aids to culture and recreation. 

These associations adapted their methods to the needs 
of special groups, but they were middle class institutions, 
like the churches, and they did not appeal to the lower 
stratum of the population. The Salvation Army found 
its mission downtown. There it preached the gospel to the 
lowest classes. Its bands paraded the streets and gathered 
crowds, and its exhorters preached to them from the street 
corners. Its soldiers lived in downtown barracks. The 
Army added social services to its evangelism after 1889. 
It maintained lodging-houses, food depots, employment 
bureaus and rescue homes, and distributed Thanksgiving 
and Christmas dinners to the children of the poor. It 
went to the sick and miserable in their homes, until Army 
lassies were loved as angels of the slums. The Volunteers 
of America with less military autocracy organized a simi- 
lar mission, making a special effort to carry a religion of 
hope and good cheer to the inmates of prisons all over the 
country. 

Meantime religion was diffusing its spirit still more 
widely in various kinds of philanthropic and _ social en- 
terprises. Experience was proving that the sympathetic 
humanitarianism of the former generation did not cure 
social ills. It was becoming clear that to solve social 
problems it was necessary to dig down to the roots and find | 
the causes, and then with improved methods to work pa- 
tiently for the eradication of the evils. Experience was 
strongly reinforced by the new social sciences. After 
1890 these shared the attention of students in the univer- 
sities and outside with the natural sciences that were so 
popular. Indeed, Darwin’s study of evolution already had 
stimulated Herbert Spencer in England to apply the the- 
\ ory to society, and in economics, politics, ethics, and soci- 
ology, laws and principles were worked out that were 
momentous for the future of mankind. The reaction of 
sociological discoveries was to stimulate social experi- 


SOCIALIZING RELIGION 145 


ments, but there was disagreement as to methods. It 
seemed to some that a radical reorganization of society was 
necessary, and they inclined towards a form of socialism. 
Others were satisfied with the slower method of social 
evolution. They adopted experiments, like the charity 
organizations and social settlements of England, and de- 
vised new ones, like civic federations and woman’s clubs. 
Through these agencies they hoped to ameliorate and even- 
tually to cure social ills. 

Organizations like the Young Men’s Christian Associ- 
ation and the charity organization society were reminders 
that the religious spirit no longer functioned through the 
single institution of the church. The church had con- 
trolled family life and education, and had been the instru- 
ment of charity in the Middle Ages, but by the last part 
of the nineteenth century the family and the school were 
no longer dominated by the church, and charity had 
passed to the state and to voluntary organizations. In 
America church and state wereseparate. Since the Reform- 
ation the church had concerned itself almost entirely 
with personal religion. But religion had been passing 
through a humanizing process, and the spirit of religion 
had been penetrating the social body. Many persons 
found a more satisfactory expression of religion in social 
benefactions of money and service than in the maintenance 
of a cult or the strengthening of an institution. Three 
fourths of the social workers were members of churches, 
and from the religion of the churches they received their 
impulse, but the church did not give them adequate scope 
for their energies. 

Despite the enormous economic gains of the Industrial 
Revolution the shock of social readjustment left many 
individuals poor and miserable. Not all handicraftsmen 
could adapt themselves to the factory and the machine 
displaced many. Even those who were able to make the 
adjustment found wages low, hours of labor long and 
wearisome, and living conditions in town barracks squalid 


146 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


and dismal. Poverty and ill health needed relief. In 
Great Britain, where the Revolution began, leading 
churchmen undertook measures of reform. Maurice and 
Kingsley, Shaftesbury and Chalmers, became pioneers 
and prophets of a new social.era. Edward Denison and 
Octavia Hill probed the hard lot of the city’s poor. Rus- 
kin and Carlyle wrote bravely of the people’s wrongs and 
the ill harmony of God’s created world. ‘These were the 
inspirers of the new social movement, organizers of relief 
and reform. ‘The first charity organization society was 
created in London in 1869 to federate all the philanthro- 
pies of London. The enterprise in the United States 
was organized on the English model by an Anglican min- 
ister who had settled in Buffalo. Societies for the im- 
provement of the poor had come into existence earlier, but 
their charity was unscientific. The newer methods were 
adopted in the large cities of the country, and a National 
Conference of Charities and Corrections, later called the 
National Conference of Social Work, tied the local soci- 
eties together. 

The social settlement was the result of an effort to 
bring together educated, well-to-do, philanthropic people 
and the poor, untrained, struggling masses in the worse 
parts of the city. It was not intended to administer 
charity ; it was not even an institutional center necessarily. 
It was-merely a place where a group of high-minded men 
and women with the love of humanity in their hearts 
made a home which might be an oasis in the city wilder- 
ness, and where the people of the desert might camp for 
an hour and drink of the refreshing spring. The men and 
women who planted the oasis did not obtrude religion upon 
those whom they met, for Catholics and Jews were most 
numerous. They invited the people to classes and clubs, 
and they visited families in a friendly way in their homes, 
coéperating frequently with the charitable societies. 
They encouraged sobriety and thrift. They were friends. 
Adopted from England, the settlement idea spread, in 


SOCIALIZING RELIGION 147 


Boston under the auspices of Andover Theological Semi- 
nary, in New York and Chicago by university graduates. 
Sometimes the settlement was connected with a church, 
more frequently not, but always the spirit that animated 
the workers in the settlements was the religious spirit 
of Jesus. 

Much of the misery in the cities was due to inefficient 
municipal government, to inadequate regulation of social 
conduct. The independent spirit of Americans was hard 
to curb, and in politics as in business nearly every one 
looked out for his personal profit first. City authorities 
were slow to vote and enforce building and health regu- 
lations, and unsafe factories and unsanitary tenements 
prepared the grist for fire horrors and tuberculous wards 
in the hospitals. Medical science did its best for the sick, 
and Christian science offered its cure for body and soul 
alike, but the grist was ground faster than the cures could 
be made, for the evils that were the cause were not re- 
moved. Disease was reénforeed by intemperance and 
sexual impurity, and the crime percentage of the cities 
was unreasonably high. The fault was not entirely with 
the government, of course. The best intentioned officials 
found it difficult to cope with the cheap theaters, the un- 
principled hotels and saloons, the unscrupulous landlords, 
and the sharpers of every kind who battened on the poor 
and unfortunate; but an inefficient government agegra- 
vated conditions that would have been bad anywhere. 

Citizen reform movements swept unprincipled govern- 
ments out of office occasionally, when the conditions be- 
came unendurable, but the old order returned under cover. 
Law and order leagues and societies for good citizenship 
served as rallying points for public-spirited citizens. The 
surest means of permanent gain was the education of the 
young people to higher ideals of city government. The 
claims of good government were emphasized by young 
people’s societies in the churches, especially the Christian 
Endeavor Society. Here and there the church or a min- 


148 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


ister took the lead in a campaign of municipal reform. 
A decided gain came with the organization, of the first 
City Club in New York City in 1892, and early in the 
twentieth century a wave of reform swept over the 
country. 

The spirit of reform extended from government to busi- 
ness. American business push had created keen competi- 
tion, which frequently made men selfish and ruthless. 
Corporations and trusts had been organized and monopo- 
lies attempted, sometimes by very harsh methods. The 
individual ethics of an earlier day did not meet the need 
of the new business situation, and the churches were so 
negligent of the social ethics of Jesus that it was possible 
for men to be punctilious in ecclesiastical observances 
and to hold high lay positions in the church when they 
were practising business methods that were unjustifiable 
from a truly Christian point of view. When the American 
conscience awoke, spurred into action by the muckrakers 
of the press and by the strenuous spirit of Theodore Roose- 
velt, business cleaned house, ashamed that national expan- 
sion and increasing prosperity had been making ambitions 
sordid and methods debasing. Muckrakers exaggerated. 
Business was rendering constantly a service of incalculable 
value to the people, and the vast expansion of credit by 
which business growth was achieved showed how trust- 
worthy men in business actually were, but the profiteering 
spirit needed the curb. The net result of the reform, some 
of it enforced by national legislation, was to print social 
welfare in capital letters in the dictionary of business. 

The most knotty social problem in the centers of popu- 
lation as the nation passed into the twentieth century was 
the problem of industry as applied in the mill and the 
mine and the workshop everywhere. In the land of op- 
portunity, where Americans had carved out primitive 
success and whither European immigrants had come with 
visions of prosperity and happiness the bulk of the profits 
of toil had gone to the few. Industrial ethics permitted 


SOCIALIZING RELIGION 149 


the employer to make the conditions of industry. The 
worker found it a stubborn problem, first, of making a liv- 
ing, then of making the living contribute to the enrich- 
ment of life. The problem was economic, but it was 
moral too, inasmuch as labor and its reward made or un- 
made human personality. Wages could satisfy the ele 
mental needs and make it possible to sustain a family, 
but there were larger questions of freedom, justice, comity, 
cooperation, personal and social development, involved in 
the labor problem. The problem developed into a long 
struggle for power, the employee demanding and the 
employer opposing increased privileges and a broadening 
recognition of labor. Hostility bred hatred and suspicion. 
In spite of the good will or sense of expediency that led 
many employers to undertake various kinds of welfare 
work, the disposition of the employing class was to sur 
render as little as possible of the power to control, and 
the worker, as he slowly won more privileges by means 
of unified effort, developed an unquenchable determination 
to profit at the expense of the employer, and, if need be, 
of the public. 

In all these social movements the church took little part. 
Charity visitors and settlement workers were affiliated 
with the churches. Municipal and business reformers 
were often leaders in the churches. Workingmen were in 
the churches in large numbers, even though they had a 
feeling that the church was too much in alliance with the 
capitalist. Ministers here and there were outspoken in 
their demands for social reform. But the churches as in- 
stitutions and most of the people who constituted the 
churches believed that religion did not include social af- 
fairs, and that the church should be as separate from 
business and industry as from the state. Ministers, dis- 
covering the social teaching of Jesus and the Hebrew 
prophets, cried out for justice and kindness, and pro- 
claimed the ethics of a Christian society. "Washington 
Gladden, Josiah Strong, and Walter Rauschenbusch de- 


150 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


fined and explained social Christianity. A “Brotherhood 
of the Kingdom” was organized in New York in 1893 _ 
among a few ministers who were inspired with the social 
idea. More church people opposed than heeded them. 
But the leaven was at work. Small groups inside church 
circles were determined to bring social questions into the 
churches and religion into the solution of social questions. 

The initial organizations that resulted were concerned 
particularly with the industrial question. As early as 
1887 the Church Association for the Advancement of the 
Interests of Labor. was organized under the auspices of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church, and later that church 
in national convention adopted resolutions sympathetic 
with the workingman. In 1905 the Presbyterians went so 
far as to organize a department of church and-tabor, and 
recommended that committees of the Home Mission So- 
ciety appoint sub-committees to make systematic study 
of the problem locally. A downtown church in New York 
was reorganized as a Labor Temple. Sometimes minis- 
ters, more zealous than well-informed, spoke unadvisedly, 
or attempted unwise mediation between parties. Some- 
times they identified themselves with particular methods 
of reform that did not meet with general approval. So- 
cialism had its flaming evangelists and its ardent con- 
verts who made of its principles a substitute for religion. 
In spite of unwisdom or opposition the social idea grew 
steadily in religious circles. 

During the first twenty years of the twentieth century 
all the prominent denominations in America organized 
social service commissions, some of them with executive 
secretaries, and issued declarations of social principles. 
This larger interest was the outcome of the initial in- 
terest in the labor problem, but it was soon seen that the 
labor problem was but one phase of a larger complex social 
problem. The action taken by the churches was the work 
of relatively few persons, but persons deeply conscious 
of social ills, and believing that the church was under 


SOCIALIZING RELIGION 151 


obligation to take cognizance of those ills. Some opposi- 
tion, developed in church assemblies, but the rank and file 
of church people were democratic, sympathetic with the 
weaker party, and easily persuaded to adopt the recom- 
mendations of a determined committee. In 1908 the 
Federal Council of Churches, which had been organized 
to bring the denominations into more effective codperation, 
especially for the social application of Christianity, 
adopted a social creed that became a norm for principle 
and a goal for effort. The creed declared that the churches 
must stand for social justice, for the protection of the 
family and of women and children in industry, for the 
abatement of the liquor traffic and the conservation of 
health, for the personal development of every individual 
and provision for the aged and incapacitated, for better 
wages and working conditions and the right of the workers 
to unite, for a new emphasis upon the application of Chris- 
tian principles to the acquisition and use of property, and 
for the most equitable division of the product of industry 
that can ultimately be devised. 

Churches began to take an interest in labor by observ- 
ing as Labor Sunday the day before the annual holiday 
of Labor Day, and the Federal Council supplied programs 
for such observance. Ministers’ conferences appointed 
fraternal delegates to labor unions, and the unions re- 
ciprocated. Occasionally ministers were invited to arbi- 
trate local labor disputes. Social service committees and 
officials investigated strikes and general industrial con- 
ditions. An Interchurch committee stirred national in- 
terest in a particularly vexatious steel strike. 

As the social interest broadened in the churches, new 
methods were adopted. Social service commissions ap- 
pointed by conventions and assemblies stirred up interest 
by leaflets, pamphlets and books, and university teachers 
wrote and spoke on social questions, often lecturing from 
church or convention platforms. The open forum, de- 
veloping out of Cooper Union meetings in New York, 


152 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. 8. 


showed great possibilities on the Ford Hall platform in 
Boston, and was adopted in many cities as a means of 
public enlightenment by free discussion. Ministers and 
lay leaders cooperated to introduce the forum method into 
the churches. Sociological courses were incorporated into 
the curriculum of the theological seminary as well as of 
the college, and chairs of Christian sociology were placed 
in the row of honor and dignity. Students of colleges 
and seminaries went out from school burning with the 
social spirit, and many who at an earlier time would have 
trained for the Christian ministry went into other forms 
of social service. The Young Women’s Christian Associa- 
tion became so progressive as to alienate some of its finan- 
cial supporters. 
The most distinctive response to the social appeal was 
the institutional church. ‘The principle on which it was 
organized was the obligation of the church to minister to 
all of the highest needs of the human personality, to sup- 
ply the deficiencies of life, to stimulate the worthiest am- 
bitions. The institutional church opened its doors every 
day. It equipped a gymnasium and baths. It provided 
a reading room and library. It organized classes for men- 
tal improvement. It provided wholesome recreation and 
the social opportunity of clubs. In some eases it opened 
work rooms, as Wesley had done in England, for persons 
who were too old or unskilled to compete for employment 
in the shops. It asked for the contributions of the well- 
to-do in worn-out goods as well as in money, and salvaged 
property as well as souls. ‘Institutional churches were 
criticised as leaving the important interests of the spirit 
for services of less value, but they vindicated their wider 
ministry by presenting balance sheets that showed large 
spiritual as well as social results. Without trying to use 
social means as a subterfuge for religious propaganda, the 
churches that showed a real interest in human welfare 
made the most successful appeal to the highest that was 
in aman. Churches there were that lost their spiritual 





SOCIALIZING RELIGION 153 


intensity from an excess of the social, but where the proper 
balance was kept between the two the results were good. 
Social problems of all sorts were complicated by the in- 
flux of a large alien element into the population. Euro- 
pean immigrants had settled America; European immi- 
grants helped to make the country free from the mother 
country and from the incubus of slavery. But _immigra- 
tion became so great as to threaten social dyspepsia be- 
cause of unassimilated masses of population. Economic 
conditions or political disturbances sent hundreds of thou- 
sands of Irish, Germans and Scandinavians to share in 
American life. These were followed after 1890 by a rush 
of Italians, Poles, and remoter peoples of central and 
eastern Europe, less akin racially, socially and religiously 
than most of the earlier comers. The most available op- 
portunities for labor or business were in the industrial 
centers of the East, and these became flooded with new 
Americans, eager to share in America’s benefits but need- 
ing Americanization. When the home missionary soci- 
eties of the churches perceived that the frontier was van- 
ishing in the West, they turned their attention to the 
social frontier of the Eastern cities. City missions had 
been organized denominationally at an earlier time to com- 
bine the resources of the local churches for Chrstian work 
among the poorer people, but the home mission societies 
with the resources of a whole denomination could use the 
newest methods of expansion and influence. Home mis. 
sion societies codperated with state missionary organiza-_ 
tions in aiding foreign-speaking churches, offering en- 
couragement and help to European groups that had be- 
come organized on an American Protestant basis—Scan- 
dinavians, Poles, Italians, and all the varieties of EKuro- 
pean nationalities. Women’s societies experimented with 
Christian socal centers in downtown churches and other 
meeting places, holding health clinics, carrying on clubs 
and classes, and imitating the most successful methods of 
the social settlements. Foreign mission societies felt the 


154 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


impulse of the social gospel, and adopted methods and 
programs in Asia and Africa similar to those in vogue in 
America. 

Through the home mission societies the churches 
wrestled with another problem that was almost purely 
American. This was the problem of the rural commu- 
nity. Drained of much of its best blood and greatest 
energy by the exodus of population from the country to 
the town, and with small, discouraged churches galvan- 
ized occasionally by a temporary revival of religious in- 
terest, the villages and hamlets and open farming coun- 
try needed readjustment to the age of cities. Their farms 
were cultivated, sometimes scientifically, oftener by the 
rule of thumb. Their schools were organized by the rule 
of three, and parsimoniously supported. ‘Their churches 
were not able to support a settled minister, at least not a 
trained man. Social methods were old-fashioned. Iso- 
lation kept people individualistic, often ignorant, some- 
‘times anti-social in conduct. Moral conditions were usu- 
- ally not so bad as in the’tities, but culture, whether moral 
or intellectual, was on a low level. There was an empti- 
ness rather than a badness to rural life. 

Under these circumstances young people could not be 
blamed if they yielded to the attractions of the city, with 
its glitter and glory, its economic opportunity, and its 
round of recreations. If they were ambitious to get ahead, 
the city offered a chance to excel. If they wanted only a 
good time, the city stretched out its hands in welcome. 
And they went by the thousand. Their brawn and brain 
were the making of the town, the impoverishment of the 
country. Unless the exodus should be checked, the 
strength of the nation would be sapped at its roots and 
the agricultural resources of the nation would be dried up. 
This situation caused concern, even alarm, and led to a 
propaganda for a better rural life. President Roosevelt 
in 1908 appointed a Country Life Commission to make 
a nation-wide investigation, The Commission, in making 


SOCIALIZING RELIGION 155 


its report, stressed the importance of the churches as in- 
stitutions that could lead the way to a richer country 
life. Church leaders became interested. They saw the 
opportunity of the church to stimulate the people, for 
religion could interpret opportunity and obligation in the 
finest terms. Rural life conferences under church and 
Young Men’s Christian Association auspices discussed 
how the church could inspire better agriculture, better 
business methods, better education, better recreation, and 
other needed improvements. Government departments 
and agricultural colleges codperated. A rural literature 
came into existence within ten years. Farmers’ institutes, 
granges, Chautauquas, offered attractive speakers and 
gathered willing listeners. Educational associations dis- 
cussed the possibilities of the rural schools. Research 
agencies surveyed counties and states. Home mis- 
sion societies appointed rural church secretaries, and 
experiments followed investigations. Certain local 
churches specialized in music, others in agriculture. Clubs 
for the boys and girls worked out programs of activity. 
Rural ministers were paid larger salaries, and better men 
were attracted and trained. Theological seminaries pro- 
vided courses on the rural church and community. Dem- 
onstration points were selected, and thorough tests were 
given to specific methods. Over-churched communities 
found it wise to combine their religious energies and 
resources in a federated church. A division of terri- 
tory was arranged amicably in unoccupied areas to 
avoid duplication of ecclesiastical effort or the omission 
of it. 

The entrance of America into the World War created 
another social situation. A growing opposition to war as 
a means of settling international differences, and a grow- 
ing sense of American security had produced a spirit of 
optimism that made it difficult to believe that America 
could be drawn into war. Churches had organized a peace 
union, along with other associations, that were thought to 


156 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


be so many bonds of peace. Quakers had long preached 
peace as one of their primary obligations. 

The churches, like the American people that composed 
them, responded patriotically to the war. They unfurled 
the flags of the nation and the Allies. They encouraged 
the men to join the armed forces of the United States in 
defense of democracy and civilization. They urged gen- 
erous contribution to war funds. They opened their rooms 
for Red Cross activities. They preached and prayed and 
sang for victory. All this was distasteful to the pacifists, 
who declared that the church forgot its mission of peace. 
It was foolish to skeptics, who charged the church with 
failing to keep the world out of war. But it could not be 
otherwise, for the appeal to loyalty is of the essence of 
religion, and loyalty to the highest social and religious _ 
principles seemed to be involved in the war. As in other 
wars, the church contributed its quota of ministers for 
chaplaincies in army and navy. Students from church 
colleges and theological seminaries left their classrooms 
and undertook service where they could find it. Rolls of 
honor were bulletined outside and inside of the churches, 
and soon gold stars were testifying to the supreme sacri- 
fice. Denominations combined to organize liberty churches 
. where war workers congregated, even Jews and Catholics 
uniting with Protestants in the common undertaking. 

The war made its contribution to the churches. It 
aroused them to energetic service in a cause that called 
for great devotion. The greatest service that the churches 
as organizations could render was to create and sustain 
national morale; in this they gave conspicuous aid. They 
learned the value of interdenominational codperation 
through wartime commissions and committees in which 
they had a part. They learned to understand human na- 
ture better, to appreciate its real worth and the height to 
which it can rise under testing. They learned the attitude 
of the man in the ranks to religion, his appreciation of the 
real and his scorn of the fictitious, his ignorance of the re- 


SOCIALIZING RELIGION 157 


ligious alphabet, and his instinctive response to the mysti- 
cal in the sacrament of the church or in the experience of 
the zero hour in trench or hospital. In many instances the 
church was humbled as it realized its failures, stimulated 
as it sensed its opportunities. The war left the churches 
with new social and codperative machinery and it encour- 
aged interdenominational effort. The National Catholic 
War Council proved a convenient agency for a broader 
social work among Catholics after the methods of the 
Knights of Columbus and the Young Men’s Christian 
Association. The Protestants had found codperation so 
delightful and war drives so easy that they enthusiastically 
organized an Interchurch Movement on a generous scale, 
and appealed to the people of the nation to underwrite an 
ambitious program that should outshine that of laymen’s 
movements already tried. Then came the disillusionment, 
the recrudescence of denominational feeling, and a drive 
against social Christianity. These were the inevitable 
aftermath of the war, concomitants of the decline of enthu- 
siasm and idealism, a part of the debasement that war 
always brings. But the war had mapped out possibilities 
for time to come. 


X. SPIRITUALIZING RELIGION 


Wuite a few thoughtful or altruistic persons were 
broadening the range of religion by rationalizing and so- 
cializing it, most people continued to think of religion as 
primarily a personal affair between them and God, a faith 
and a feeling rather than an intellectual concept or an 
altruistic purpose. They valued religion as a spiritual 
asset, lifting them above the sordid experiences that every 
day brought and linking them with another world where 
God was. They valued the Bible because it moved in the 
realm of the spiritual, and stimulated a religious attitude 
and purpose. They valued the church because it made 
easier the effort that was necessary to get to Heaven. 
The religion of the American was not very thoughtful, but 
it was definite and real. 

The largest number of religious people were Protestants, 
and belonged to churches that made an emotional experi- 
ence basic in religion. Conversion was the technical 
term in use to explain that experience, preferably as thor- 
ough in manner as that of the Apostle Paul. Christians 
harked back to the primitive church as their pattern. 
That church was not perfect, but it was the nearest to its 
founder. The first disciples caught something of his 
spirit, with all their failure to understand the fineness of 
his character. American church people believed that 
the bond that held together the first Christians was spir- 
itual, not ecclesiastical. They were witnesses to the power~ 
of the spirit of Christ in human character. They did not 
call themselves mystics, but they knew by the test of their 
own experience that the electric flash of spiritual under- 
standing comes neither through the intellect nor through 

158 


SPIRITUALIZING RELIGION 159 


the church, but through the inner contact of the human 
spirit with the divine. Whatever the theological explana- 
tion of that contact through divine immanence or the pos- 
session of the Holy Spirit, there was no question about the 
reality. 

Modern mysticism had medizval as well as ancient sanc- 
tion. The medizval church had its true and its pseudo- 
mystics, its saints and its impostors. Some of them were 
forerunners of a spiritual reformation in the old church 
of Rome, some the heralds of a personal relation with God 
which was to become the cardinal doctrine of Protestant- 
ism. German and Dutch mystics warmed the heart of 
European Christianity. John Tauler inspired Luther; 
Hans Denck was an Anabaptist mystic. Thomas 4 Kem- 
pis became the spiritual guide of Catholics and Protes- 
tants alike. The succession of mysticism passed to the 
modern churches through the English Quakers, as ration- 
alism descended through the Socinians. They valued 
the inner light more highly than the Bible. They believed 
that the divine illumination was theirs as much as it be- 
longed to other ages. Coupling their mysticism with less 
creditable opinions that were obnoxious to conventional 
churches, they were for a time a thorn in the flesh in 
England and America, but when they had sloughed off 
their peculiarities they became the transmitters of a faith 
in the reality of the spirit that has been a useful balance 
to an extreme advocacy of concrete religion. Nor were the 
Quakers heedless of external reality. Very often mys- 
ticism has wrapped the soul so completely in itself that 
it is oblivious to everything else. The danger of Christian 
Science and of the New Thought that were having their 
vogue at the end of the nineteenth century was at just 
that point; too much minimizing of the reality of matter 
and suffering made many indifferent to human woes. Not 
so with the Quakers. They were pioneers in social re- 
form before the bulk of religious people had become con- 
scious of social misery and wrong. 


160 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


The definition of spiritual reality did not prove easy 
for any school of thought. Traditional theology distin- 
guished sharply between the soul and the body, but 
did not analyze the soul. Modern science found no room 
for spirit in its categories. The new psychology found evi- 
dence in spirit for the divine nature that is the essential. 
part of the human personality and cannot be separated 
from it. The Puritan struggled for the spiritual mas- 
tery of the flesh, and believed in the perseverance of the 
saints until the spirit should win the victory and enter 
Heaven its true home. He felt himself but a pilgrim here, 
an alien in a foreign land. His New World experiences 
were like his spiritual sojourn in that respect. Rarely did 
he know ecstatic bliss, but he had his communings with 
God, and his spiritual satisfactions in spite of the hard- 
ness of his creed. Jonathan Edwards believed in the 
reality of spiritual bliss while yet in the body; he who 
went down into history as preéminently a theologian and 
philosopher was first of all by his own valuation a friend 
of God. The Methodist kindled with spiritual fervor un- 
der the touch of a kindlier faith in a universal atonement, 
and believed that as God called every man to be his friend, 
so he gave every man who accepted the invitation the wit- 
ness of the Spirit. Like the Quaker, the Methodist kept 
his feet on the ground, practising a religion that was con- 
crete, redemptive of bodies as well as souls, careful of 
social as well as personal need. To him the Bible was the 
spirit’s guide, having authority as well as spiritual food, 
and he listened with more expectancy to a minister than to 
any inner voice. 

Natural science and Christian Science went to opposite 
extremes in their attitude towards the immaterial. Be- 
cause the scientist could not analyze spirit under the micro- 
scope or measure its presence by any evidence of the 
senses, he was too ready to declare it non-existent. He be- 
came humbler later on, when the atmosphere became dy- 
namic and matter began to dissolve into something more 


SPIRITUALIZING RELIGION 161 


ethereal, but science indicated spirit by an interrogation 
point. Christian Science planted itself on the principle 
that the material is the unessential. Mary Baker Eddy 
found that the power of the mind over the body was so 
great as to relieve the functional disorders of the body, and 
when she and her followers were able to bring relief from 
pain to hundreds of persons and perform miracles of 
healing, it was easy to leap to the conclusion that the 
spiritual nature was the only reality. “Science and 
Health” became a companion to the Bible, and Mrs. Eddy 
co-Savior of the world. 

Long before Christian Science had evolved from the 
mind of its founder faith healing was a well-known prac- 
tice. The shrine of Lourdes in France and the church of 
St. Anne de Beaupré in French Canada were places of 
deposit for the crutches of cripples who had been cured of 
their ills through spiritual faith. Protestants in their 
own way, without relics or consecrated shrines, have be- 
heved that the prayer of faith is able to bring physical 
relief, for the Great Spirit is the Great Physician, and 
what Jesus Christ could do on earth the Father can do in 
Heaven. The Emmanuel Movement in Boston was the 
sanest of the spiritual cults, combining the skill of the 
physician and the power of spiritual suggestion. 

Normal evangelical Christians in the churches of Amer- 
ica were content to cultivate their spiritual nature by the 
customary methods of church worship and the prayer 
meetings. Worship in the meeting house supplied a weekly 
inspiration to high endeavor, made it easier to do the day’s 
work, reassured the skeptical mind as to ideal values, 
widened spiritual horizons. The more intimate contact 
of the prayer room made the mid-week meeting for con- 
ference and prayer a holy of holies to aspiring Christians. 
On that evening at the toll of the bell those who were re- 
ligiously disposed wended their way to the quiet retreat 
of church vestry or chapel, and there for an hour engaged 
in prayer and exchanged their religious experiences under 


162 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


the leadership of the minister, interspersing exhortation 
and prayer with spiritual songs. To a Baptist or Metho- 
dist or Presbyterian brought up in exemplary fashion this 
was a perfectly natural practice, and it was sanctioned by 
the fellowship meetings in the upper room at Jerusalem 
and by the conventicles of the early Protestants during the 
period of the Reformation. John Wesley had gained his 
vital religious experience in a Moravian prayer meeting in 
London, an experience that made him the founder of one 
of the most virile religious movements in history. Count- 
less Christians could testify to the help to right living 
received from the weekly prayer meetings in the churches, 
and many ministers believed the prayer meeting to be an 
accurate barometer of the spirituality of the church. But 
many deeply religious people disliked the familiarity and 
intimate revelation of one’s own spiritual experience; 
others were indifferent altogether; and as the nineteenth 
century merged into the twentieth the difficulty of main- 
taining the prayer meeting became a serious problem in 
not a few churches. To the outsider the prayer meeting 
was a matter of indifference; he never attended and never 
gave it a thought. To the psychologist it was an interest- 
ing experiment. He saw men weary with the day’s toil or 
overburdened with business problems, women with obliga- 
tions in the home, young people who naturally would be 
attracted elsewhere gather week after week in a barely fur- 
nished room, lighted perhaps by only a few smoky lamps 
and half heated by a decrepit stove, some of the people in 
the country driving in over muddy or frozen roads. He 
perceived no visible altar, no evidence of divine presence, 
only indifferent leadership. He heard discouraging reci- 
tals of spiritual defeat, repetitious prayers without much 
faith, songs poorly sung. But through it all, if he was sen- 
sitive to the heart throbs of his kind, he felt the new cour- 
age and renewed aspiration and kindling faith in God, and 
he saw the small company of worshipers scatter to their 
homes with satisfaction of soul. He could not help believ- 


SPIRITUALIZING RELIGION 163 


ing in the reality of spiritual experience, however he might 
explain the process. 

The prayer meeting is the nearest approach of the Prot- 
estant to the Catholic confessional, except as an individual 
occasionally pours out his heart to his pastor. Naturally 
reticent, the Protestant prays best at home, but he values 
the exchange of thoughts and feelings that is possible in a 
religious company. ‘The maintenance of the meeting is 
easier because of the spontaneity of the occasion. After 
brief opening exercises the leader invites general partici- 
pation. The absence of liturgy, the custom of extempora- 
neous prayer, the perfect freedom to speak or to keep 
silent, the occasional stimulus of music, provides an at- 
mosphere that conduces to contentment. ‘The social con- 
tacts make their contribution. The prayer meeting was 
the hotbed of religious feeling. 

Church bodies that magnified emotional religion found 
that an occasional goad was needed which the meetings for 
worship and prayer did not supply. Revivals had proved 
useful for that purpose, and they continued to be the 
favorite method of arousing religious fervor. It was not 
regarded. as necessary that the revivalist should under- 
stand the inner nature of the human mind, if only he ob- 
tained certain reactions. The art of getting converts 
was more important than the psychology of religion. 
Orude methods of appeal that smacked of the earlier camp 
meeting days were used by a few evangelists, as in the 
“Billy” Sunday campaigns. Other speakers understood 
rightly that the feelings were central in religious experi- 
ence, and they used an emotional appeal, but they learned 
the importance of requiring evidences of conversion in 
consistent Christian living through subsequent months and 
years. Ministers found out how to employ follow-up 
methods to secure this result, and organized classes for 
the training of those who were candidates for church 
membership. 

Catholic and Episcopal churches depended on the edu- 


164 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


cation and confirmation of their young people for acces- 
sions rather than on a process of conversion, and stimu-- 
lated the spiritual nature by means of the accessories of 
worship rather than by prayer meetings. Episcopal 
churches furnished models of architecture from the chancel 
to the cross-tipped spire. The dignity of their services 
attracted persons from other communions who loved order 
and beauty in worship, and in the cities especially the 
Protestant Episcopal church grew rapidly in popularity 
and was justly proud of its social standing. The Catholic 
church had its attractions for those who were not content 
with the half-way house of Episcopalians, who bathed 
their souls with delight in the sensuous worship and rested 
contentedly on the authority exercised by the Catholic 
clergy. The quiet sanctity of the cathedral, its dim re- 
ligious light, the candles that burned perpetually on the 
altar, the soothing music of the great organ—these were 
voices calling them back to the bosom of mother 
church. Catholic accessions from Protestantism have not 
been so numerous in America as might be expected of 
human nature, but some of them have been of great value 
to the preaching ministry of the church. 

It took Protestantism a long time to appreciate esthetic 
value. ‘The whole influence of Puritanism was against. 
beauty and symbolism in worship. Plain rooms and bare 
walls, ornate pulpit furniture, utter absence of ritual, all 
spoke of a lack of taste. Even in the classrooms of chil- 
dren religious art was long represented by gaudy prints 
and mottoes before pictures of finer quality were hung on 
the walls. Not much before the twentieth century did 
churches here and there awake to the desirability of im- 
proved architecture and appoint architects for churches 
that were teachable. 

Music has a peculiarly inspiriting ministry, but the 
kind of music in vogue was very limited in scope and 
quality. The first product of an American printing press 
was the Bay Psalm Book. The Puritans valued the Old 


SPIRITUALIZING RELIGION 165 


Testament Psalter and used metrical versions in their 
worship. Watts’s hymns enlivened the praise service, a 
real advance over the psalm singing of an earlier time. 
_ Presently a revival hymnody introduced the copious writ- 
ings of Charles Wesley. His hymns reflected the feelings 

of warm-hearted people and gained wide popularity in 
other denominations as well as in his own Methodist fel- 
lowship. These spiritual songs were followed by large 
numbers of revivalistic verses and melodies published 
under the title of gospel songs or hymns, chiefly the prod- 
uct of the Moody and Sankey period; these had great 
vogue for a generation but failed to prove their lasting 
quality. These were the songs that were in common use in 
prayer meetings. In Sunday worship more dignified 
hymns culled from ancient and modern writers and com- 
posers, usually by denominational editors acting under 
the auspices of a denominational publishing house, were in 
use. Hymns that had a universal appeal and music that 
touched a common chord of emotion were adopted and 
sometimes adapted to the use of liberal or orthodox con- 
gregations without much regard to their denominational 
origin. The hymn book next to the Bible was the religious 
storehouse of all Christians. The character of the hymns 
corresponded to the character of American religion. ar 
more of personal aspiration than of social need was in 
them. Didactic theology cropped out now and again. 
Hortatory urging of God and men to activity was com- 
mon. ‘The social aspects of religion were conspicuously 
absent. But with the passing of the sterner theology and 
the broadening of human sympathy came a new note of 
passionate longing for a common share in the best that 
God could give. 

The musical setting of the hymns was frequently an 
adaptation from secular tunes. In the nineteenth century 
certain original composers were popular and produced 
melodies and harmonies that could be sung easily by an 
ordinary congregation. Later more ambitious compos- 


166 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


ers wrote a musical notation that was more intricate in 
character, and congregational singing gave way in many 
churches to choirs and paid quartettes. The rendering of 
church music became more artistic, in some cases furnish- 
ing more sensuous enjoyment than incentive to worship. 
The untrained congregation turned sometimes with relief 
to the ragtime melodies of popular song books, except in 
those churches where an effort was made to bring the 
people to an appreciation of the less simple but more beau- 
tiful hymns and anthems of high musical quality. 

Literature made its contribution to religion.. Sermons 
and theological treatises were published in an appeal to 
the intellect, missionary and Sunday school literature for 
specific ecclesiastical purposes, religious history and bi- 
ography for those who were interested in such subjects. 
These contributed only indirectly to spiritualize religion. 
Much of the devotional literature that found its way into 
print a century ago was open to the criticism of being 
sentimental and morbid. The fiction of the Sunday school 
libraries was not of high grade. Gradually a healthier 
sort of literature was discovered to be more stimulating to 
true spirituality. The output of religious books argues 
that the religious interest of the American people does not 
decline. The secular newspapers and periodicals have 
opened their columns to discussions of both theoretical 
and practical religion. 

No kind of American literature so appeals to the spirit 
as does poetry. Its message is to the heart rather than to 
the intellect, yet the basic beliefs in God and Christ, in 
life and death and the beyond are strengthened by the 
poet’s stanzas. The American poets have contributed their 
faith and hope to the enrichment of spiritual experience. 
The strong faith of Walt Whitman in the validity of the 
soul, Emerson’s confidence in God, Whittier’s trust in his 
mercy and loving kindness, Bryant’s dependence upon his 
power, were all props in the time of doubt and fear and 
distress. The poets differed in their interpretations of 


SPIRITUALIZING RELIGION 167 


Christ, but in their attitude towards him they were rev- 
erential and willing to accept his leadership. They pon- 
dered the mysteries of life, but they accepted its worth, 
and they believed in a life to come. The popular poets 
that were read at the fireside and memorized and recited 
in school were poets of confident faith and hope and 
aspiration, and as such were preachers of religion and 
ministers to a spiritual quality in that religion. 
American religion has had its quietists, practising 
meditation and prayer, finding God in the “quiet hour.” 
It has had its exponents of the simple life and of as- 
ceticism, urging the abandonment of fripperies and 
frivolities for the good of the soul. It has had its senti- 
mentalists who devoured memoirs of child saints or de- 
votional books of a morbid character. It has had in re 
cent years a healthier religious literature, like Fosdick’s 
trilogy on the meaning of faith, prayer and service. It 
has had its saints of the cloister and saints in the market 
place and saints on Sunday in the church. With all its 
handicaps religion has kept its spiritual essence. 
Slowly a clearer appreciation has come of the meaning 
of spiritual religion. It has degenerated easily into 
sentimentalism because it plays on the emotions and 
kindles the imagination. It chills upon too close con- 
tact with intellectual arguments. It loses its bloom in the 
rough buffetings of the market place. It has had to 
struggle to keep itself sane and pure. As men have 
thought and studied and experienced, they have discovered 
that spiritual religion consists first in a consciousness of 
God, not as an objective truth but as a subjective reality 
that enters into human life, a part of the warp and woof 
of human personality. This consciousness has given 
understanding and power and has motivated religious 
action. Jt has supplied the inspiration, the volition that 
has eventuated in prayer, worship, and revival effort. It 
has created the prophet and sanctified the priest. 
Unprejudiced students of religion came to see that 


168 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. 8. 


spiritual religion has greater values in character than 
in the production of transient phenomena of a purely 
emotional sort. The shouting of the exhorter, the physi- 
eal extravagances of the Holy Roller, the dancing of the 
Shaker, the pious professions of the colored brother who 
might steal chickens on occasion, were rightly appraised as 
phylacteries on the garments of religion, not its naked 
substance. The churches in America have been revaluing 
the religion of their members, demanding a finer moral 
texture in Christian life, testing profession of religion 
by the known character of the professor. Holy unction 
has come to rank below the quiet, inconspicuous service 
of every-day saints. A non-ecclesiastical religion that is 


' -born of the consciousness of an indwelling God and that 


fruits in character and conduct has compelled recognition. 
Church religion is at a discount in comparison in some 
quarters, not that the church has ceased its usefulness and 
will not recover, even in unfortunate local complications, 
its spiritual solvency. but the estimate of religion is 
changing. 

This revaluation of religion has been peculiarly ef- 
fective in the colleges. There inquiring minds are search- 
ing for reality. With their enrichment of the under- 
standing by science and history and literature they probe 
the profounder truths that underlie philosophy and re- 
ligion, They think in the classroom and talk about it in 
the quiet conversation that sometimes happens among 
close friends. The college student hates a sham. He is 
impatient with unreality. He is prospecting for truth. 
The trappings of ecclesiasticism are liable to repel him. 
The conventional sermon or book palls upon him. But 
he responds to the preacher who gives him a fresh inter- 
pretation, or to the prophet who shows him a vision of 
life worth while, because it is lived in the consciousness 
of God and under the push of noble impulse. The college 
student is not abnormal, but he is supercritical and super- 
sensitive. He commonly loses his inherited religion, 


eS. ae ee 


SPIRITUALIZING RELIGION 169 


but as frequently finds one that suits him far better and 
that has the quality of spirituality that consecrates life. 

The interest in the real meaning of religion that 
touched the student seized upon the teacher. ‘The pro- 
fessor of natural science discovered that evolution could 
not be explained by the struggle with tooth and claw, but 
that the protective instinct of the mother animal saved 
her offspring again and again, and mutual aid in the flock 
or the herd made the individual members able to survive. 
If it is so among animals, it is truer still as a principle 
among humans. At that point the social scientist made 
his contribution. He discovered that the qualities of 
kindness and sympathy and affection ruled in the primary 
groups of the family, the clan, and the neighborhood 
among those who attained to civilization, and he was 
honest enough to admit that the principles of reconcilia- 
tion and love and service that are so basic in the teaching 
of Jesus, yet were discounted by many persons as im- 
practicable, were thoroughly sound as sociological princi- 
ples and necessary for the solution of present day social 
problems and for future social evolution. 

The professor of philosophy wrought out a psychology 
of religion. It analyzed the religious nature of man, 
tested and valued his religious experiences, studied the 
aims and methods of organized religion from the point of 
view of their contribution to personal and social religion, 
and fastened its hold upon the art of religious education 
in determined fashion. Through the Religious Educa- 
ciation Association, that was organized in the belief that 
the methods of religious training, especially in the Sunday 
school, could be greatly improved, the study of the psy- 
chology of religion was popularized. Normal courses for 
teachers in the subject of child study were arranged in 
conjunction with courses in pedagogy. Ministers began 
to read books on the subject, and theological seminaries 
to add it to their curriculum. Convictions deepened that 
religion must be taught to young people more sensibly 


170 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. 8. 


and more effectively. Week-day sessions of church 
schools were arranged, vacation Bible schools started, and 
revolutionary methods introduced into the Sunday schools. 
It was perceived that a boy’s religion is not the same as 
that of his mother, that a college girl’s experience is not 
that of a minister, and that religious teaching should take 
the differences into account. It developed that young peo- 


ple of the church societies needed less introspection and 


more social expression. The possibilities of the future 
unfolding of the whole subject of religion began to be 
glimpsed, and the psychology of religion promised valu- 
able contributions. 

Standing in the way of all progressive thought was 
the inertia of ecclesiastical bodies. Always a fear that 
the values in the old ideas would be discounted made 
churches cautious about welcoming new interpretations. 
Vested interests in the sphere of religious education con- 
tended for their ancient rights. The Bible might lose its 
prestige or a conservative theology might have to yield 
its hold upon the church mind. Ministers and teachers 
educated in the older conceptions of religion and accus- 
tomed to existing methods resisted change. ‘Those whose 
sympathies were evangelistic saw an error if not a danger 
in the new emphasis on education. After two decades of 
the twentieth century the progress of the new is gaining 
in rapidity, but its future speed is problematical. 

In one respect, at least, the conservative deserved the 
attention of those who were impatient with his reactionary 
disposition. He knew that there were values to be con- 
served in the old thinking. He knew that the old message 
of the pulpits had stirred hearts that were callous and 
seared, that the old theology and the religious education 
stressed ideas, as of sin and penalty and justice, that were 
as real and as necessary as mercy and forgiveness and 
love, and that religion cannot grow and bear fruit with- 
out storm and cold as well as dew and sunshine. The 
conservative believed, too, that the modernist was too 


an 


SPIRITUALIZING RELIGION 171 


well satisfied with the intellectual products of the schools, 
and too scornful of the intuitions and feelings of the 
saints in Israel. They held that the things that had al- 
ways and everywhere been believed were more valuable 
than the most enlightened or clever thinking of minds 
that were pioneering on their own account. 

The conservative charged the modernist with stressing 
the social applications of religion until the personal rela- 
tion of the individual to God, which is the essence of all 
religion, was obscured. ‘The conservative knew that there 
were depths and reaches of personal experience that could 
not be plumbed by a religion that centered in the idea of 
social service. 

The forms, traditions, and conventions that seemed so 
important to the conservatives meant relatively little to 
the modernists. The authority of such things was medi- 
zeval. They were far more concerned with the realities 
that lay back of externals than with theological statements. 
To them the issue with which religion was vitally con- 
cerned was the issue with a materialistic philosophy. 
Was the spiritual truly real, or could it be that the mate- 
rial was all that counted? In the long perspective of the 
centuries would character and service be appraised most 
highly, or was it enough to observe the forms and go 
through the gestures of religion, devoted at heart to the 
pursuit of the things of time and sense? To emphasize 
a traditional theology or a particular form of creed or 
organization or ordinance was to confess that the tradi- 
tional and material are essential to religion, and so to 
strengthen the contentions of the materialistic philoso- 
pher. But a materialistic age like this cannot be recon- 
structed after the fashion of the kingdom of God without 
an emphasis upon the transcendent value of a proper per- 
spective in life’s purpose and a consecration of personality 
to God and to the service of human kind, at the cost of a 
sacrifice of lower interests to higher, when necessary. 

Naturally, each group in the church was impatient with 


172 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


the other. The conservative blamed the liberal for giving 
up hard won victories of ancient truth for vague gen- 
eralities. The modernist was impatient with a conserva-—~ 
tism that blocked his path with ancient monuments, 
whether organizations or creeds. Shibboleths, war cries,” 
denominational fences, were but ecclesiastical trappings 
that obscured the vital truth of spiritual experience. 
They were of the material that perishes; it is the spiritual 
only that endures. 

The modernist took as a spiritual norm the life of 
Jesus. New accounts and interpretations of that life 
came from the presses of publishers, and confirmed him in 
the conviction that the chief function of the Christian 
religion is to interpret and reproduce the matchless life 
and teaching of Jesus. Certain modernists failed to 
realize that it was not sufficient merely to furnish an 
understanding of the life and teaching. More of them 
knew that the dynamic of the personality of Jesus must 
transfuse the spirit of the disciple, that it must keep in 
contact with the creative energy of God, must give him 
such spiritual vigor that he would be able to meet the 
emergencies of life, and daily to practice service and 
self-denial for the sake of others than himself. Inspira- 
tion as well as interpretation was essential to religious 
progress. 

Both schools agreed that to spiritualize religion was 
to release reservoirs of power for a thirsty age. Maulti- 
tudes of people were getting along with substitutes for the 
water of life that were not satisfying to the deepest needs. 
The restlessness so apparent both before and after the 
World War, the eager search for satisfactions on the 
lower physical level, the impatience with religious cults 
that served only an adulterated spiritual mixture, were 
all evidences that human nature craves a spiritual re- 
ligion. There was a growing consensus of belief in a 
religion that is rooted in a firm consciousness of God 
and faith in him; in an experience of communion with 





SPIRITUALIZING RELIGION 173 


him that is not merely a glowing ecstasy of the soul, 
but eventuates in life; that is dynamic in producing faith 
and righteousness in an imperfect, misunderstanding 
world that needs these elements of character; and that 
functions through a church that is consecrated to the 
real spirit as well as name of Jesus Christ. 


XI. THE CHURCHES 


Rexieton in America has been less dependent on ec- 
clesiastical organization than in other countries, but its 
normal expression has been through the church. In the 


absence of state churches since colonial times religion has ° 


been free to find outlet in individual probity without pro- 
fession of religion, in humanitarian service, in art and 
literature, but in proportion as individuals have responded 
to the religious impulse they have been drawn into the 
churches as the organized expression of religious purpose. 
Customarily they joined the denomination of. their 
parents; occasionally belief in a distinctive principle 
represented by another church, or the special attraction 
of a minister or a form of worship, attracted elsewhere. 
It was good form to attend church, even if one had no 
strong interest in religion, but gradually such an act of 
courtesy ceased to be necessary to social standing. 
Personal allegiance was primarily to the local church. 
It was visible and convenient, and there were concrete 
values in neighborhood association. Loyalty to the de 
nomination was felt keenly by Catholics, Episcopalians, 
and Lutherans; among more loosely organized groups the 
local church satisfied the sense of loyalty. The Episco- 
palian meant by the church the orderly organization that 
had been transmitted through centuries from ancient ec- 
clesiasticism; the Disciple thought of the church as the 
organization of local members gathering regularly in the 
meeting house for such forms of worship as seemed right 
and expedient. He believed in the one church of God as 
an ideal, but the local church satisfied his present need. 
The baptismal font or baptistery was the gate of 
174 


[ ee : 7 . 
og Se te EE a a ~ «oe ~ ~~ 


THE CHURCHES 175 


entrance into the church. Baptism was administered to 
infant children on the responsibility of parents or god- 
parents by ministers of most denominations, and the chil- 
dren were expected to qualify for responsible church 
membership when they came to years of discretion. Bap- 
tist churches and their kin, which did not practice infant 
baptism, won adults to willing confession of faith and 
entrance into the church, and hoped through Sunday 
school and home training to produce proper spiritual 
qualifications in the children so that they might qualify 
in their youth for church membership through baptism. 
At regular intervals the Lord’s Supper, or eucharist, was 
administered in the churches to the members present. 
Except to a few like the Quakers these sacraments, or 
ordinances, seemed of binding significance. Discussion 
sometimes raged over times and modes of observance, but 
there was little question that the observance was obliga- 
tory. - 

Those who did not yield to spiritual impulses or ec- 
clesiastical invitations could not escape the influence of 
the church in the community. The mere presence of a 
meeting house in a village or at the crossroads was a 
constant reminder of human obligations and an incentive 
to idealism. Those who permitted themselves to listen to 
evangelistic preaching occasionally were likely to be 
pricked in conscience as they pondered their religious 
obligations; others became “gospel-hardened” by resist- 
ing successfully the evangelistic appeals of the weekly 
pulpit. In less emotional gatherings the quiet influence 
of the ritual service and the harmonious surroundings 
stirred the best impulses of the soul, dissipated though 
they might be through the lack of any focal point of volun- 
tary decision. Each church had its own modes of wor- 
ship and methods of appeal, and among them men and 
women of all sorts and conditions found spiritual satis- 
faction. 

As the churches differed in their mode of worship and 


176 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. $. 


manner of appeal, and in their qualifications for mem- 
bership, so they differed in organization. These differ- 
ences were partly a matter of temperament but mainly 
the result of European inheritance. All churches pro- 
vided in their local organization for both spiritual and 
corporate leadership. The clergyman was treated with 
marked respect. In Catholic and Episcopal churches he 
was dignified by his ordination at the will of the historic 
episcopate and by his appropriate vestments. The Angli- 
can clergyman in the colonies was popular for his good 


fellowship socially rather than because of any homiletic | 


ability, but with the strong development of the Protestant 
Episcopal church he came to have a weight of social 
influence that was unsurpassed by any other communion. 
The Puritan minister, whether Presbyterian or Congre- 
gational, felt himself a man of authority by virtue of 
the grace of God rather than by his ordination or his 
Geneva gown and bands. He was ordained more demo- 
eratically by presbytery or advisory council, but he re- 
garded himself as divinely commissioned to proclaim the 
will of God. His voice in the pulpit was to the people 
as well as to himself the voice of God’s ambassador, and 
in town affairs as well as in the church he was often an 
oracle. He combined in himself the offices of priest and 
prophet and pastor, and his serious demeanor and correct 
deportment commanded universal respect. With the re- 
laxation of Puritanism the minister ceased naturally to 
seem so much like a demigod, but he was still a ‘‘divine” 
in the thought and language of the people. 

The more democratic churches chose their own minis- 
ters, inviting them from other pulpits, or ordaining them 
for their first pastorates. It was the custom for a minis- 
ter to remain with a church many years, sometimes for 
life. In such a case he built himself into the life of a 
community, baptizing the children, marrying and coun- 
seling with those who bore the burdens of middle life, 
and burying the aged, until he endeared himself to his 


oue 6s is 


THE CHURCHES 177 


whole parish. Lay deacons—among Presbyterians dea- 
cons and elders—assisted the minister in the spiritual 
_ leadership of the parish and administered ecclesiastical 
charity. Methodism introduced the useful class leader, 
religious censor and inspirer of the small group, and 
demonstrated clearly the value of the laity. Among 
Episcopalians and Methodists ministers were appointed 
by the higher clergy, who took into consideration the 
wishes of the local church. Vestrymen and wardens at- 
tended to the business affairs, as did the stewards in the 
Methodist churches. 

No lengthy official roster was printed on church calen- 
dars. The days of Sunday schools, women’s and young 
people’s societies and numerous committees was not yet. 
They all came in the nineteenth century, but the earlier 
organization of the churches of all kinds was simple. All 
local questions were settled in Congregational and Bap- 
tist churches by the church itself, aided on occasion by a 
special council of delegates from neighboring churches 
invited to give advice on a specific local problem. Episco- 
palians and Presbyterians committed the management of 
local affairs to a smaller group than the congregation, 
and recognized the authority of higher regional courts as 
soon as they had been brought into existence on the Old 
World model. The organization, like the worship, of the 
Catholic churches continued after the pattern of the 
European system of Rome. 

It was difficult, even for Protestant churches in Amer- 
ica, to escape from the obsession that the clergy consti- 
tuted a class apart, with distinct privileges and with func- 
tions that could not be performed properly by the laity. 
The Episcopal churches were compelled to use lay readers 
in order to hold services of worship in the South in colo- 
nial days, because ordained ministers were few. When 
Methodists undertook to evangelize the rural regions of 
America, it was necessary for them to use the lay ex- 
horter and to depend on the class leader as a kind of 


178 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


assistant minister. Presbyterians were reluctant to per- 
mit any but trained ministers to preach. Nevertheless 
laymen asserted their rights in the business management 
of churches of various denominations, and after a time 
pressed for larger recognition. They secured representa- 
tion in the national assemblies of the churches, filled 
important places on committees, and by and by came to 
occupy the highest offices. Towards the end of the nine- 
teenth century lay movements came into vogue, even in 
the Catholic church, arousing interest in missions and 
social service, and stimulating loyalty to the church and 
generosity towards its enterprises. Laymen took part in 
evangelism as members of deputations, speakers at shop 
meetings, and helpers and organizers in large evangelistic 
campaigns. They organized men’s classes in Sunday 
schools and brotherhoods in local churches and throughout 
a denomination. In the Unitarian fellowship they set in 
motion a progressive campaign that rejuvenated the de- 
nomination. In the future their religious activity prom- 
ises to be essential in all departments of church life. 

The role of women in the religious history of America 
never has been estimated. Under the ban of silence in 
the churches from before the time when Anne Hutchin- 
son aroused the ire of the men of Puritan Boston until 
late in the nineteenth century, they played a noble part 
in the maintenance of religion. It was the mothers who 
taught their children the rudiments of religion in the 
home, sent them to church and Sunday school, taught 
them in the classrooms, and sent them out into the world 
shielded by their prayers. It was the wives of ministers 
who sustained their courage, censored their sermons, 
aided them in pastoral service, and kept the home on a 
pecuniary allowance that was often pitiably small. 
Women were frequently the mainstay of the small 
churches. They raised money for church purposes by 
personal sacrifice and uncomplaining service. They al- 
most alone made any contribution to the social life of 


THE CHURCHES 179 


the church. They constituted the largest part of church 
membership. They were the most regular attendants at 
the appointed meetings of the church. They were organ- 
ized in mission circles for encouraging and contributing 
to missions from the beginnings of the missionary enter- 
prise, and they went as missionaries to the fields of ac- 
tivity. They were the burden bearers of religion. Not 
until they received social and political recognition were 
they welcomed to general positions of ecclesiastical re- 
sponsibility, but that privilege and responsibility was 
met efficiently when the opportunity came. 

Young people in the churches have occupied a similar 
position of subordination. They furnished subjects of 
discussion in the polemics over infant baptism; they were 
drilled in the catechisms of the several faiths; they were 
the objects of father’s counsels and mother’s prayers. 
They were the chief consideration in the organization of 
Sunday schools, and when they grew to maturity they 
became in their turn teachers and leaders in the church, 
if they had a spirit of consecration, gifts of leadership, 
or a will to be active and prominent. But as a class, until 
_ they reached years of manhood and womanhood they were 
expected to walk humbly in the sanctuary. As the 
churches escaped gradually from the thraldom of con- 
servative ideas and methods ministers began to see possi- 
bilities of usefulness in the young people. They possessed 
open minds, energy, latent capacity for abundant serv- 
ice. They were encouraged to meet together as a group 
and to assume the leadership in such meetings. Then 
Francis E. Clark, a Congregational minister in Port- 
land, Maine, organized a society of Christian endeavor 
in his own church on the basis of a pledge to attend 
and participate in the meetings of the organization. So 
timely was the event that within a few months similar 
societies sprang up all over the country in the various 
denominations, to unite shortly in a united Young People’s 
Society of Christian Endeavor. Within a few years other 


180 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


denominations than the Congregationalists felt it desir- 
able to corral their own young people into denominational 
organizations, but the movement gave a tremendous im- 
petus to young people’s activity in the churches and to 
an interdenominational spirit. In the judgment of many 
Christian leaders the young people’s organizations were 
too self-centered and needed more avenues of religious 
expression, but their potential worth both to the young 
people and to the churches received generous recognition. 

Most local churches were slow to appreciate the value 
of a larger denominational unity, as were the American 
people until after the Revolution. The spirit of inde 
pendence so characteristic of local towns and colleges 
created a fear or jealousy of outside authority and an 
obstruction of the free spirit that moved in the heart of 
Protestantism. In New England the experiment of 
colonial synods did not result in permanent associations 
among the Congregational churches, though their ministers 
organized and enjoyed such associations among them- 
selves. In 1707 the Baptists organized a group of. 
churches into the Philadelphia Association, following the 
example of their English fellow believers. It was nearly 
fifty years before a similar organization was effected in 
South Carolina, and sixty years before the experiment 
was tried in New England, and then only four churches 
could be induced to join. The Associations served as a 
bond of fellowship and a reminder of a denominational 
connection. On occasion they ‘stiffened the resistance of 
the dissenting churches to the established church, and in 
course of time they became agencies of evangelism, but 
they lacked sufficient functions to keep them very useful. 
An Association normally had in its membership from ten 
or twelve to twenty churches, each of which sent its pastor 
and lay delegates to an annual meeting, which provided 
spiritual stimulus and an opportunity to discuss topics 
of common interest. 

The influence of tradition led to a more closely knit 


THE CHURCHES 181 


organization among both Episcopalians and Presbyterians. 
The Church of England had inherited the bishop and 
his diocese from the church of Rome. No Episcopal 
organization could be regarded as satisfactory without 
the diocesan machinery. ‘The Anglican policy prevented 
the consecration of any American bishop during the colo- 
nial period, but as soon as the Episcopal churches of 
America had recovered from the Revolution a convention 
was held, an ecclesiastical constitution prepared, and the 
necessary steps taken to secure the consecration of bishops 
overseas. As rapidly as possible the complete machinery 
of the church was put in order, heading up in the Gen- 
eral Convention which meets triennially. Presbyterians 
organized a district presbytery the year before the Bap- 
tists inaugurated their association, and as Presbyterian 
territory increased grouped presbyteries in a synod. Ulti- 
mately after the Revolution synods were bound together 
in a General Assembly with legislative authority over 
the churches. The Presbyterian church in America bore 
the stamp of its Scotch origin, and did not forget the 
discipline of Calvin at Geneva. 

Other denominations approximated the organization of 
these four. When the Methodists emerged from the ob- 
scurity of their small beginnings in the years following 
the Revolution, they preserved the episcopal organiza- 
tion of the Anglican church out of which they had come, 
but appointed their bishops by authority of a General 
Conference of the churches meeting quadrennially, and 
assigned them territory temporarily instead of giving 
them diocesan authority in perpetuity. Local churches 
had their quarterly conferences directed by presiding 
elders, later called district superintendents. Ministers 
met in annual conference, where assignments were made 
to pastorates. Methodists believed in an itinerant min- 
istry, and until within recent years made pastoral assign- 
ments for a brief term only. 

The Reformed churches, both Dutch and German, were 


182 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


presbyterian in their organization. In common with 
Scotch Presbyterians and English Puritans they had re- 
ceived their denominational impress from Geneva, and 
had kept the Calvinistic polity as well as theology, which 
the New England Congregationalists had abandoned. 
During colonial times both groups looked for guidance 
to the classis of Amsterdam, but organized separately as 
American denominations after the independence of the 
colonists was secured. The strength of both bodies lay 
in the eastern part of the country, where most of the 
Dutch and Germans settled. Later immigration sent a 
considerable number into the Middle West, and some of 
their congregations continued to use the Dutch language 
and the European liturgy. Many of the German folk 
also went to the West where their Lutheran countrymen 
became numerous, but the strength of the German Re 
formed church remained in Pennsylvania, where most 
of them had settled in colonial days. 

Lutherans had no fixed form of local organization in 
Europe, and they kept their mixed polity in America. 
A few Lutherans had accompanied the Dutch to the 
original colony of New Amsterdam, but their initial col- 
ony was the Swedish settlement on the Delaware river. 
Not until the eighteenth century was a Lutheran church 
organized in the colony of Pennsylvania, which became 
the home of German Lutherans in colonial America. 
There was a tendency of Germans of different faiths to 
draw together, and they might have merged their differ- 
ences had not Henry M. Muhlenberg stimulated the 
Lutheran consciousness and given the people more definite 
corporate organization. He assisted in organizing a 
Lutheran synod in Pennsylvania in 1748, and thus gave 
coherence to the whole body. | 

In the nineteenth century Lutheranism gained great 
accession of strength from European immigration. Both 
Germans and Scandinavians poured into the upper Mis- 
sissipp1 valley and beyond into the Northwest until the 


THE CHURCHES 183 


churches in the interior were twice as many as in the 
East. Lutherans differed in nationality and in language; 
some of them were stricter than others in their adherence 
to the formulas of faith that had come out of the six- 
teenth century, but all alike revered Martin Luther and 
jealously guarded the faith and customs that they had 
brought with them from the Fatherland. Later decades 
added the Finns to the Lutheran nationalities in Ameriza. 
A solidifying process in recent years has united most of 
the Lutheran synods into a united Lutheran denomina- 
tion, and Lutherans of all sorts constitute a strong body 
of more than two million members. 

About the beginning of the nineteentn century another 
denomination of German origin came into existence, in- 
fluenced by the Methodist movement and organizing it- 
self after the Methodist pattern. It took the name of 
United Brethren. Certain Mennonite and German Re- 
formed ministers had a share in originating the new 
body, and it was among German-speaking people that 
the organization gained adherents, but their doctrines 
were Arminian rather than Lutheran, and class leaders, 
itinerant preachers, and bishops gave a Methodist cast 
to the denominational features. With some dissensions 
the denomination grew to respectable size, and had a 
leavening influence among the people of German descent 
in America. 

Few churches with any form of organization. won 
greater popularity than the Disciples of Christ. Their 
organizer was Alexander Campbell, son of an Irish Pres- 
byterian minister. In Pennsylvania, where the family 
settled early in the nineteenth century, changing opinions 
about baptism carried Campbell into Baptist affiliation, 
but like Roger Williams he was not content to remain in 
the new connection. Friction developed because Camp- 
bell expressed peculiar opinions, and presently he was 
organizing his followers, popularly dubbed Campbellites, 
into a new Christian group. Quite independently other 


184 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


small groups had seceded from Presbyterian, Methodist 
and Baptist connections in that period when religion was 
in flux, and under the impulse of the belief that denomi- 
national divisions were wrong, and that as far as possible 
all Christians should return to the teaching and practice 
of the early church, designated themselves simply as 
Christians. Campbell’s movement drew to itself most of 
these Christians, and in spite of the general opposition to 
denominationalism they became a new denomination of 
Disciples. Those who did not join with the Campbellites 
united in the “Christian Connection.” 

The Disciples adopted a congregational polity, organ- 
izing both locally and nationally much like Baptists and 
Congregationalists. They made a remarkable growth, 
drawing from the Baptists and becoming a leading denomi- 
nation in the Middle West. They did not lose sight of 
their ideal of Christian union. In 1910 they organized 
an Association for the Promotion of Christian Unity, 
and through their religious weekly, the Christian Cen- 
tury, leaders of the Disciples added their contribution to 
the common cause which was being promoted by the Ou- 
look, the Independent, the Christian Herald, and Chris- 
tian Work. 

Out of the period of free experimentation in the organ- 
ization of American churches emerged three distinct types 
of denominations: the congregational, which reserved to 
the local church or congregation the right of ecclesiastical 
control, a democratic polity practiced by Congregational- 
ists, Baptists, Disciples, and a number of smaller groups; 
the presbyterian, which selected representatives of the 
local churches and gave them authority over local bodies, 
including Presbyterians and the Reformed churches, 
Dutch and German; and the episcopal, which recognized 
the bishop as endowed with rightful administrative au- 
thority and found in a general conference or convention 
scope for denominational legislation, a type represented 
by the Methodist and Protestant Episcopal churches. 


THE CHURCHES 185 


In spite of certain family likenesses in polity and be- 
lief the American churches tended to disintegrate, throw- 
ing off diverging branches because of minor differences 
or sectional grievances. This was the tendency up to the 
Civil War. After that time they tended towards integra- 
tion, and efforts at reunion began to show promise. Cer- 
tain large bodies were conspicuously successful in preserv- 
ing unity. The Catholics were able to do it by the careful 
education of their children and by the exercise of ecclesi- 
astical authority when any inclination appeared to assert 
independence. The Episcopalians allowed diversities of 
opinion in unessentials and so were able to hold together 
almost without secession High and and Low and Broad 
churchmen. ‘These communions presented object lessons 
of the value of unity. 

The nineteenth century opened a wider vista to the 
ecclesiastical imagination of the congregationally organized 
churches. A new consciousness of the responsibility that 
lay on all Christians to be of service to their fellowmen 
led to the formation of missionary societies and humani- 
tarlan organizations. This new sense of a common interest 
produced more closely knit organizations. First in state 
assemblies and then in national councils those free churches 
effected their regional organizations. Eleven years after 
the Congregationalists had organized their American 
Board for missions they created in Massachusetts their 
first local conference of churches, and five years later in 
Maine their first state association. Baptists in Massa- 
chusetts had organized their first state convention twenty 
years earlier. In 1852 and again at the close of the Civil 
War general assemblies of Congregationalists from all 
over the country met and discussed their mutual interests. 
All these culminated in 1871 in the organization of the 
National Council “to express and foster their substantial 
unity in doctrine, polity, and work; and to consult upon 
the common interests of all churches, their duties in the 
work of evangelization, the united development of their 


186 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE UJ. S. 


resources and their relations to all parts of the kingdom 
of Christ.” Delegates, both lay and ministerial, repre- 
sented the churches. The experiment has worked well. 
Fifty years of experience with the National Council con- 
vinced most Congregationalists, for example, that it has 
great value as a clearing-house of opinion and a rallying 
point of denominational interests. The appointment of a 
moderator and a general secretary in recent years, men 
who visit the churches and confer with pastors, is a devel- 
opment that is indicative of closer relations than formerly — 
among Congregational churches, not to say of an approach 
to denonraationnl oversight of the churches. 

Along the same road but more slowly moved the Bap- 
tists. When the division arose over the slavery issue 
Southern Baptists organized their interests in a Southern 
Baptist Convention, but in the North their ecclesiastical 
kin continued to be satisfied with their associations and 


state conventions and the three voluntary societies that 


had the care of foreign and home missions and Sunday 
school interests. With the opening of the twentieth cen- 
tury an increasing conviction spread that the various enter- 
prises of the denomination should be codrdinated, the 
unity and efficiency of the churches should be stimulated, 
and the denominational mind have an opportunity to — 
express itself on moral and religious issues. After con- 
siderable agitation and discussion the Northern Baptist 
Convention was provisionally organized (1907), and the — 
organization was ratified by the churches and made perma- 


nent the next year. In the organization the constitutional 


convention adopted resolutions declaring adherence to the — 
principle of the independence of the local church and the 


advisory and representative character of the district asso- 
ciations and state conventions, but affirming at the same 


time the conviction that a general body was needed to — 
minister to the common interests of the denomination. Me 

The evolution of congregationalism as a church polity 
has been from the simple to the complex, and from the 





THE CHURCHES 187 


local to the national and even international organization. 
Based on the principle of the self-government of the local 
church with no definite relation to other churches, except 
as the occasion demanded an advisory council, the Con- 
gregational and Baptist denominations, and similarly 
Disciples, Adventists, and Unitarians, have come to in- 
clude widely diverging agencies closely related in organiza- 
tion and becoming continually more codperative, all find- 
ing a common head in a national body. Congregational- 
ism has many points in common with American political 
and social organization. It has learned to combine flexi- 
bility with permanency, and tries to adjust local autonomy 
to efficient national leadership. The Congregational 
churches have easily become community churches because 
they adapt themselves most readily to the needs of all 
sorts of Christian people. 

No denomination showed greater vigor and efficiency 
than the Methodist church. From a later beginning than 
-the other large religious bodies of America it came to have 
the largest membership among the Protestants. It had a 
coherence that was lacking to the more loosely organized 
groups. Its local churches were under careful oversight, 
bound together in district conferences with district super- 
intendents in charge, every region of the country admin- 
istered by a bishop, and the whole brought into unity of 
action in the General Conference that meets quadrennially. 
Though at first Methodists depended to a great degree on 
lay leaders and preachers, a few of the ordained ministers 
enjoyed the advantages of theological training and the 
standards of the ministry were steadily raised, colleges 
and seminaries were multiplied, and ministers were kept 
up to pitch by means of the annual conferences and re- 
quired courses of reading. Methodists were first to under- 
take a forward movement for greater efficiency and to 
raise a large sum of money to finance it, when the World 
War compelled the churches to face their mighty tasks. 
Their centenary movement included in its plan a rapid 


188 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


expansion of the missionary and rural enterprises of the 
denomination, appropriated millions of dollars to hospi- 
tals, institutional churches, industrial and immigrant cen- 
ters, seven millions each for strategic urban and suburban 
parishes, for downtown evangelistic centers, and for edu- 
cation in foreign lands, and millions more for new and 
remodeled buildings in foreign mission territory. On so 
huge a scale were religious organizations able to make 
budgets and plan enlargements. 

Denominational loyalty was strongest in the South. In 


that section people lived almost entirely out in the country, 


and country folk tend to conservatism. So it was that they 
took religion as they found it, not interested in questions 
of theology or biblical criticism, nor stressing the applica- 
tion of religion to life, but certain that their brand of re- 
ligion was better than any other. Baptists had the largest 
numbers, Methodists a powerful influence. Both of these 
groups had separated from their Northern kin and organ- 
ized independently, continuing to carry on their missionary 
and educational interests. During the sectional conflict 
of slavery their absorbing interest was the war, but men 
like Stonewall Jackson carried their religion into the camp 
and stood publicly for Christian faith and conduct. After 
the failure of the Confederacy it took time to recover, but 
more recent years have seen fresh enthusiasm in the 
churches, the construction of worthier ecclesiastical struc- 
tures, and an increased appreciation of religious training, 
especially for ministers. 

Negro churches have most needed educated leadership. 
Millions of negroes belong to colored Baptist and Metho- 
dist churches, which attracted them after they withdrew 
from the churches of their masters, to which in many cases 
they had belonged. Little educated, they never got rid 
of all the superstitions of their African ancestry, and their 
religion expressed itself on the emotional level. Too often 
negro church members were guilty of moral lapses and 
they found it difficult to put their religion into life. Their 


THE CHURCHES 189 


churches were the social centers of the people; most of 
their recreation as well as worship centered there. As 
they grew prosperous in their independence they were able 
to contribute to the support of negro schools and other 
social institutions, and they learned to form associations 
for mutual aid and uplift. Northern home missionary so- 
cleties gave them aid, and Southern states shared educa- 
tional funds with colored citizens. . 
Consolidation of organization and enlarged and co- 
ordinated plans were necessary in every denomination be- 
cause of the multiplication of ecclesiastical machines. 
Missionary societies and Sunday schools became general 
among the churches. Educational and charitable interests 
had to be taken care of. All these had to be related to 
one another, for each organization tended to overemphasize 
its own importance and privileges. Even church buildings 
felt the effects of the new societies. Episcopal parish 
houses became common in the larger centers, leaving the 
church structure unchanged for its purely religious pur- 
poses, but other denominations adapted their meeting 
houses to a greater variety of uses. Basements that had 
been used for prayer meetings were given over in part 
to dining room and kitchen and ladies’ parlor for the 
women’s gatherings and church sociables. When possible 
chapels were thrown out as a wing of the building, quar- 
ters were provided for Sunday school classrooms, and a 
suitable room for the mid-week meetings of the church. 
Where money was plentiful and good taste had the choos- 
ing of an architect, church buildings were erected that 
were a credit to the church and community. The severe 
simplicity of Puritanism gave way to softer outlines and 
minor tones, and the play of lights and shadows upon 
frescoed walls through stained glass windows. Music 
lent itself to the moods of the worshipers. Sermons and 
prayers were adapted to the occasion and shortened to 
their proper place in a service that never lasted more 
than two hours and usually less. The minister lost his 


190 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. §S. 


authority, but in proportion as he kept in contact with 
the people of his parish through his ministrations and in 
touch with the thought of his day through his studies he 
held a place of dignity and influence in his church and 
community. 

It was inevitable that the Protestant churches should 
lose relatively their commanding position, as immigration 
brought millions of Catholics and Jews into the country, 
and as changing ideas about the relative value of re 
ligion and science drew many away from the churches to 
follow other gods. Especially was this the case among 
educated young people when the churches with which 
they would have kept affiliation were hostile to everything 
that was new and different from the tradition in which 
they trusted. New ideas were broadcasted by the press, 
and the uninstructed crowd caught quickly the signifi- 
cance of the changes that were going on, Relaxation of 
the authority of religious tradition made it easier for 
the self-indulgent to quiet or sear their consciences, and 
presently more people were staying at home from church, 
and refusing to respond to the most persuasive urgings 
of church evangelists. To win the multitude certain min- 
isters adopted sensational methods, advertising striking 
topics and attempting methods and poses to arouse curi- 
osity and discussion. Such efforts made little lasting im- 
pression. Other ministers organized clubs and threw open 
the doors of their churches every day or evening, and 
through their institutional methods were able to enlist 
new recruits and do them good, if the church did not 
lose its sense of relative values and forget that its primary 
function was religious. Meantime a majority of churches 
steadily maintained their customary services, practiced 
a sane evangelism, and added to their strength in spite of 
the indifference of thousands of persons in every large 
community. 

Rapid as was the growth of population in the United 
States growth of membership in the churches was more 


” ae as 


THE CHURCHES 191 


rapid. The official religious census of 1890 credited 
Catholics with 6,258,000 members, Methodists with 4,- 
598,000, and Baptists with 3,718,000. Presbyterians 
and Lutherans each had about a million and a quarter. 
Sixteen years later Catholics had increased to approxi- 
mately 10,637,000, Methodists to 5,311,000, and Baptists 
5,344,000. Sixteen years later still, in 1922, figures 
published by the Federal Council of Churches gave ap- 
proximately to Roman Catholics 18,260,000, Methodists 
8,262,289, Baptists 8,167,535, Lutherans 2,515,000, 
Presbyterians 2,402,000, Disciples and Protestant Episco- 
palians more than a million each, and Congregationalists 
838,000, with a grand total of all Protestant bodies of 
more than twenty-seven millions. The value of ecclesi- 
astical property and the amount of benevolent contribu- 
tions increased in proportion. 

The greatest handicaps to church efficiency were in- 
sufficiently trained ministers and Sunday school teachers, 
the conservative attitude of the rank and file among 
church people towards new methods, and excessive de- 
nominationalism. In a number of the denominations the 
proportion of uneducated ministers was far too large. 
If a zealous young man had ready utterance and showed 
himself to be of pious disposition, he was encouraged 
to go into the ministry, and many churches preferred the 
zeal of such a one to the thoughtful discourses of a prod- 
uct of the schools. Those who went through college caught 
something of the scientific spirit and method, but the 
new had not penetrated into the theological seminaries 
much before the beginning of the twentieth century, ex- 
~ cept in the classrooms of a few liberal-minded professors. 
The newer disciplines of social science, especially psy- 
chology and sociology, had not yet found room. Certain 
ministers who caught the new social spirit did not know 
how to apply it in their churches because they had not 
been trained. The new psychology and pedagogy came 
to the teachers in the Sunday schools later still. 


192 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.&%. 


The church mind, like the legal mind, is notoriously 
conservative. In the region of ideas conservatism was 
to be expected of those who regarded revelation as a fixed 
deposit, but in group methods American people were try- 
ing new ways of doing things, and the church would have 
gained from a greater degree of experimenting in efii- 
ciency. It seemed as if the past had set its sanction upon 
certain ways of procedure, and what was good for the 
fathers was too good to be sacrificed to the novel methods 
of the children. The old ways of building churches, of 
choosing ministers and church officials, of teaching in the 
Sunday school, of conducting prayer meetings, of raising 
money, of observing special church days, of meeting in 
associations and conventions, of renting church pews, of 
conducting church funerals, were preserved when methods 
and machinery were changing on the farm and in the fac- 
tory and life was moving at accelerated speed along every 
avenue of activity. The period was not without its gains 
in new organizations, but too often new organizations were 
added when new methods of using the old would have 
been better. Finally excessive loyalty to denominational- 
ism was a severe handicap against which increasing pro- 
test was being made. 


XII. TENDENCIES TOWARD UNITY 


Tue disintegration of church unity which had followed 
the sixteenth century revolt from Catholicism had spent 
itself in America almost completely by the time of the 
Civil War. Small groups came into existence occa- 
sionally on the basis of a special tenet regarding second 
adventism or ethical culture or other matter of absorb- 
ing interest to a certain few, but Christian Scientists 
constituted the only new group of any size organized after 
1865. Denominationalism was still a prominent feature 
of American ecclesiasticism, but wordy wrangling had 
ceased generally. 

The disposition to multiply unnecessarily the number 
of local churches was the bane of small communities, 
though such duplication of effort was expensive finan- 
cially, and local church rivalries were bad for the dis- 
position. Such duplication and rivalry were not confined 
to churches. Parallel railroads were built. There was 
cutthroat competition in business. Benevolent fraterni- 
ties of many names overcrowded country towns with their 
lodges. Third parties and fifth wheels of all kinds clut- 
tering the political and social highways were evidences of 
the individualism and group differentiation that were so 
characteristic of the American people. Nothing better 
could be expected in religion, especially when each de- 
nomination believed that its own type of religion was 
better than any other. 

The time came when competition became so keen as 
to force consolidation of organizations. Railroads became 
reorganized into trunk lines and systems. Giant corpora- 
tions absorbed the smaller fry in business. District 

193 


194 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


schools were merged into large central plants. Churches 
could not escape the influence of the new time spirit. The 
disposition to magnify differences gave way to an in- 
clination to find likenesses. A growing consciousness of 
large common tasks made possible a more reasonable atti- 
tude of tolerance and comity and mutual understanding, 
and banished the acuteness of strife over doctrine or 
polity. 

The first evidence of common religious interest ap- 
peared in the revivals of the eighteenth century. The 
English evangelist, Whitefield, was not a partisan in 
religion, and he summoned sinners to repentance from a 
Congregational pulpit as willingly as he spoke in a 
sanctuary of the Episcopal church of his fathers. On 
occasion he preached out-of-doors. The thrill of religious — 
interest stirred the countryside. People of all creeds 
flocked to hear him and the evangelists who itinerated 
after him. New members were gathered into various de- 
nominational bodies. The Great Awakening should be 
regarded as an efficient means of bringing the people of 
separate colonies into a common consciousness. The 
political events that preceded and intensified the Revolu- 
tion greatly increased the sense of unity of interest, until 
the people of the new states were able to join in a na-— 
tional government. Then with the beginning of the nine 
teenth century another series of religious revivals strength- 
ened the bond of sympathy and likemindedness. 

The churches that stressed the necessity of personal 
repentance and faith in Jesus Christ as a divine Saviour 
from sin were classed as evangelical in distinction from 
denominations that stressed the sacraments as efficacious 
for salvation, or others that denied the necessity of atone- 
ment or sacrament for salvation. Evangelical Christianity 
was true to the faith of the fathers, tending in the more 
emotional groups to be evangelistic in method of ap- 
proach to the unregenerate, organizing itself for missions 
among the people of the frontier and far abroad. Non- 





TENDENCIES TOWARD UNITY Eo 


evangelical Christianity of the liberal sort was critical, 
lukewarm in religious effort, neither evangelistic nor 
missionary, though conspicuously humanitarian. Catho- 
lics were sacramentarians, and High church Episcopalians 
and Lutherans had a similar alignment. A fair test of 
Protestant evangelicalism came with the organization 
of the Evangelical Alliance, started in England in 1846 
and organized in America in 1867. That body was insti- 
tuted to bring into closer fellowship and cooperation indi- 
viduals of different denominations on a basis of spiritual 
unity. Without adopting any creed its founders affirmed 
their belief in the Bible, in the Trinity, and in Jesus 
Christ as an atoning Savior from sin. Such a foundation 
could not be acceptable to the most liberal groups of 
Unitarians and Universalists, and they remained out- 
side the new organization. The Evangelical Alliance 
proved its value in creating a keener consciousness of 
the essential unity of evangelical churches, in making 
a deeper impression upon communities, and in prepar- 
ing the way for associations of churches as well as of 
individuals, 

The missionary opportunities of the nineteenth cen- 
tury and the obligation to establish Sunday schools and 
churches on the expanding frontiers produced a sense of 
the need of codperation. Then were founded the unde 
nominational organizations which have functioned as 

distributors of religious literature and missionary and 
educational agencies. The Young Men’s Christian Asso- 
ciations and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Unions 
helped at the middle of the century to make people of 
different Christian affiliations feel the principles that 
animated them all. In trying to provide abundance of 
life, physically, mentally and socially, as well as spir- 
‘Itually, men and women of any Christian group could 
work together. Mutual acquaintance tended to break 
down denominational barriers. Sitting together around 
the same council table produced a consciousness of com- 


196 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


mon problems. Kindred purposes stimulated codperative 
undertakings. 

The Young Men’s Christian Association found a place 
in student circles in 1858. Out of that affiliation came 
the Student Volunteer Movement, designed to interest 
the college student in foreign missions as a life work. 
The results were far beyond anticipation in the accessions 
to the ranks of missionaries, and ultimately the move- 
ment broadened to include missionary service in America, 
but one of the by-products of the enterprise was an im- 
petus to interdenominational organization and coopera- 
tion. Similar in effect was the Laymen’s Movement, the 
Men and Religion Forward Movement, the Christian En- 
deavor Society, and the young people’s missionary move- 
ments. The reform movements of the nineteenth century 
to which the churches were committed were still another 
encouragement to common endeavor. 

Several methods have been tried to bring churches to- 
gether. Congregationalists and Presbyterians united for 
missionary purposes at home and abroad in the early years 
of the nineteenth century. About the same time the 
Disciples of Christ preached the union of all Bible be- 
lievers as Christians. Both movements were premature. 
In 1886 the Protestant Episcopal church championed the — 
cause of church union, proposing a union of religious de- 
nominations on the basis of the Apostles and Nicene — 
creeds as doctrinal statements, the Bible as the rule of 
faith, the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, — 
and the historic episcopate as the basis of organization. — 
They hoped to enlist in the enterprise not only the Prot- 
estant churches but also the Catholic churches of Europe, — 
and of course the Church of England. Their platform — 
was adopted by the Lambeth Conference of pan-Episco- — 
palians in London and became famous as the Quadri- — 
lateral. The Episcopalians believed themselves the natural 
mediators between Catholics and Protestants, but neither 
side responded as cordially as was hoped, though the over- 


+o" 
yy 






TENDENCIES TOWARD UNITY 197 


tures were repeated at intervals of time. In 1910 the Gen- 
eral Convention of the Protestant Episcopal church pro- 
posed a world conference on faith and order. In response 
more than thirty denominations and Christian organiza- 
tions appointed commissions to codperate, but after thir- 
teen years little real progress had been made in spite of 
the leveling influences of the World War. 

Meantime less ambitious methods of approach had been 
found feasible. The first was reunion within the denom- 
inational family of the children who had broken away 
from parental restraint. Before the nineteenth century 
was past Northern Presbyterians of the Old and New 
Schools were able to bury their differences and to reunite 
on the basis of the Westminster Confession of Faith which 
both revered. Some years later the parent body welcomed 
back the Cumberland Presbyterians, except for a recalci- 
trant few. Overtures between Northern and Southern 
Presbyterians gave hope of ultimate reunion between those 
bodies. Baptists and Free Baptists found their old theo- 
logical differences no longer a barrier to reunion. The 
“Freewillers” had been anathema in the days of rigid Cal- 
vinism, but time had softened the rigor. The extreme 
democracy of both groups made local action necessary for 
the union of local churches, a process more difficult than 
a union of denominational missionary organizations or 
the reorganization of state conventions into a United Bap- 
tist Convention, as in Maine. Methodists achieved minor 
reunions, and planned a major reunion between North and 
South which was long in coming. Lutherans found it 
possible to get together in most cases after the shaking 
up of the World War. 

Easy as such reunions might appear to outsiders, the 
obstacles in the way of reunion were sometimes prodigious. 
Past grievances made small groups sensitive; special 
principles seemed too important to lose sight of; par- 
ticular names were too precious to give up. In some 
cases litigation to prevent transfer of church property 


198 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


donment “at Henamninaeibnet shan es aha a merging of 
denominational interests in a community church. Such 
union churches seemed ideal for a community with sparse 
population or in a suburban district just beginning to 
grow. It was hoped that through such organization the 
religious needs of the community might be met. In a 
few cases they were conspicuously successful, but they 
felt the lack of affiliation with other churches everywhere, 
lacked the stimulus to benevolence because they were out 
of contact with the great missionary enterprises, and in 
most cases tended to lose their vitality. To obviate this 
difficulty the Massachusetts Federation of Churches en- 
couraged union churches to meet. annually in association, 
an experiment that proved worth while, but such a prac- 
tice was liable to lead to the development of another 
denomination, as it had in the case of the Disciples of 
Christ. The most satisfactory working arrangement was 
to create a denominational affiliation for the union church 
by securing temporary financial assistance from a de- 
nominational missionary board and receiving as pastor 
a missionary of that denomination. It was likely in such 
a case that the union church would eventually become a 
church of the denomination with which it was loosely 
affiliated. 

The federated church was a local experiment designed 
to preserve existing denominational interests at the same 
time that union of activity was assured. Two or more 
local churches agreed to join forces for maintaining wor- 
ship, jointly choosing and supporting a pastor, sometimes 
of a denomination different from either of the churches 
cooperating, and carrying on joint religious activities. — 
Most such experiments failed through the weaknesses of _ 


human nature, but some of them persisted to success. In _ 


that case one of the local meeting houses was used for 





TENDENCIES TOWARD, UNITY 199 


religious purposes, and the other was converted into a 
parish house for social and community purposes. If it 
remained a typical federated church the constituent de- 
nominational organizations continued, new members join- 
ing the particular church of their choice and by virtue 
of that act becoming members of the federated church. 
To most denominational leaders an amicable exchange 
of territory between denominations seemed preferable to 
federation. When one denomination had a strong church 
in one locality and a weak one in another place, it was 
deemed advisable to exchange the weak church with an- 
other denomination similarly cireumstanced. Thus two 
weak churches were eliminated, and in each community 
a sturdy church survived which could take over the whole 
religious responsibility for the community, and neither 
denomination lost to the other. Yet in spite of the obvi- 
ous advantages to religion not a few denominationalists 
criticised such a policy of the elimination of the weak. 
Most promising of all endeavors to overcome the handi- 
cap of ecclesiastical divisions was the federation of 
churches on a larger scale. Local town and city federa- 
tions were useful, but still broader organizations could 
lead the way for churches over a large territory. Non- 
conformists in England pioneered in the organization of 
the National Council of the Evangelical Free Churches 
(1896), with local federal councils in one hundred and 
thirty communities. The purpose of the federation was 
declared to be the codperation of the evangelical free 
churches, their spiritual growth, the social application of 
religion, and the defense of the rights of the free churches. 
Federation was discussed in Scotland, and was tried out 
in the British colonies. It was becoming plain that de- 
nominations could get together for codperation when they 
could not find a basis for organic union, and it was hoped 
that such codperation after a time might obliterate di- 
visional lines of dogma and ritual. Even in doctrine 
Christians of all kinds were magnifying their generic be- 


200 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. S. 


liefs, like personal faith in Jesus as a divine Savior and 
Leader, the requirement of individual righteousness, and 
personal immortality, while denominational shibboleths 
were fading into the background. 

In America pioneer experiments were made late in the 
nineteenth century, and a full-fledged state organization 
came into existence in 1902. The growing usefulness of 
these bodies recommended the federative movement, and 
within a few years it had gone far enough to warrant 
calling an interchurch conference with delegates from 
thirty-two denominations. Out of that conference came 
the definite organization of the Federal Council of 
Churches of Christ in America. It had its first meeting 
at Philadelphia in 1908, and after that met quadrennially. 
The Federal Council was organized with five avowed 
objectives: to express the catholic unity of the Christian 
church—though non-Trinitarian bodies were not ad- 
mitted—to secure united service, to encourage mutual 
counsel and inspiration, to enlarge the moral and spiritual 
influence of the churches, and to promote the organization 
of local federations. It was accepted as worth while by 
thirty evangelical denominations which gave approval, and 
eventually agreed to give it definite support. An executive 
committee meeting annually kept the wheels in motion, 
and various permanent committees gave their attention to 
evangelism, missions, and other prominent interests of 
the constituent churches. 

Following the lines of least resistance and obeying the 
spirit of the time, the Federal Council put its major em- 
phasis on social service. Appointing a commission of its 
own, it enjoyed the codperation of the social service secre- 
taries of the leading denominations, who constituted a 
secretarial council and were the backbone of the commis- 
sion. Investigations were made into industrial situations 


and publicity given to the findings. Relations were es- — 


tablished with various ameliorative agencies. Literature 
in large amounts was prepared and distributed for the 


TENDENCIES TOWARD UNITY 201 


education of the church public. Temperance, marriage 
and divorce, Sunday observance, child labor, religious and 
moral education, immigration, and international arbitra- 
tion passed in review. When the World War came, the 
Council vigorously joined in cooperation with other re- 
ligious and moral agencies, and out of the war experience 
came several monographs on the church and social condi- 
tions, notably on industrial and international relations. 

The function of the Federal Council was conceived to 
be not so much to accomplish results of itself as to stimu- 
late other organizations to more efficient activity and to 
correlate their efforts. In the pursuance of that end the 
Council fostered the organization of state and local federa- 
tions of churches, some of which have given initial prom- 
ise of great usefulness, especially in large cities. 

The gravest difficulties in the way of all kinds of co- 
operation and federation were the ignorance and prejudice 
of individuals or their firm conviction of the religious 
value, even necessity, of their own denomination. These 
personal feelings and convictions were reénforced by the 
vested interests of the denominations, which feared to 
lose money as well as prestige if their particular activities 
were not kept prominent. Churches had been maintained, 
sometimes for several generations, by the sacrifice and 
toil of devoted members and in some instances small 
churches had made valuable contribution to the leader- 
ship of the denomination through a son or daughter of the 
church gifted with vision and ability, and it was hard to 
surrender such a heritage. Then, too, denominations 
varied in their practice of democracy, and democracy was 
a principle endeared to the independent churches. Mat- 
ters of belief played a smaller part than might have been 
expected, but they kept apart such groups as Congrega- 
tionalists and Unitarians which once had been united. 

About the time that the Federal Council was launched 
missionary codperation took organized shape. Missionary 
education for young people, united study for women, and 


902 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U.S. 


a drive to interest laymen, were experiments that proved 
of permanent value. Foreign mission boards in America 
formed a conference, meeting regularly to facilitate co- 
ordination of missionary effort. In 1910 the most widely 
representative missionary conference that ever had been 
brought together met at Edinburgh, and six years later 
a Latin American conference met at. Panama. In each 
case regional conferences followed in mission territory. 
For a hundred years English, American, and Continental 
Protestants had been sending their missionaries into the 
pagan lands of Africa and the East, and various American 
denominations had found place in Latin America. Hach 
denomination had planted its own brand of seed corn, and 
it had grown up and borne fruit. But soil and climate 
did not always prove suited to the seed. Cultivation was 
too intensive on certain areas. There were congested 
districts and at the same time vast areas scarcely touched 
by the plow. The ecumenical conferences made possible 
necessary adjustments, and gave a better perspective of 
the whole field. 

While the missionary boards were finding closer mutual 
approach at home, the denominations were getting to- 
gether in the mission territory. Orientals never 
sympathized strongly with the historic differences 
between Christian sects, and it was easy for them, 


first through processes of comity and codperation, — 


to join in federations of churches and in some cases in 
organic union. Several denominational bodies in India 
set the example, finding it relatively easy to unite mis- 
sions of denominations with the same name from America 
and Great Britain, or with identical doctrines, like Pres- 
byterians and Congregationalists. Japanese and Chinese 
Christians were not far behind in demanding united Chris- 
tian bodies for those nations. In national conferences 
they found inspiration and fellowship and widened ac 


quaintance. It appeared as if the East would set the 


pace for the West in the progress of Christian unity. 





TENDENCIES TOWARD UNITY 203 


Contemporaneously a Home Missions Council attempted 
to correlate missionary undertakings in the United States. 
On overchurched territory readjustments were made that 
tempered earlier rivalries. In new sections an amicable 
allotment was made for religious work among both whites 
and Indians. Investigations were made into the question 
of immigration. Whole states were surveyed, and the sur- 
veys were published for a better understanding of the 
ecclesiastical and social situation. In the Far West eight 
denominations in 1911 organized the Pacific Coast Ori- 
ental Workers Association in the hope of adjusting work 
among Orientals on the shore where East and West had 
met. In Chicago the Codperative Council of City Mis- 
sions was formed to evangelize the foreign population of 
the city, to aid in maintaining churches in downtown dis- 
tricts, and to establish needed churches in the newer parts 
of the city. 

The climax of federative effort was the attempt to 
organize an ambitious Interchurch Movement after the 
World War. Impelled by the tremendous changes that 
the war had wrought and by the unwholesome social and 
political conditions that were revealed, church leaders 
from different denominations met and planned a great 
enterprise which should first survey minutely American 
and foreign communities, take account of the ecclesiastical 
resources, and raise large sums of money to carry out. the 
plans that were being made. General and regional con- 
ferences were held to enlist the sympathy and codperation 
of ministers and churches and an expensive organization 
was inaugurated, but the public did not respond to the 
financial appeal, weary as it was from the drives of war 
funds, various forms of opposition arose, and the Move- 
ment found itself compelled to liquidate. In the opinion 
of its critics the enterprise might have had better success 
with wiser counsels and a less ambitious program. 

The whole federative movement belongs to contempo- 
rary history, but it is an indication of a new spirit among 


204 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE U. &. 


the churches. The tendency to get together is marked. 
It is rapid. It promises a new efficiency. It is not organic 
church union, but a step in that direction, and it is re 
garded as more practical, if less ideal. 

Meanwhile the Catholic church, strong in its unchanging 
convictions and with the dignity and confidence of its 
age-long inheritance, went on its way, rather scornful of 
the divisions among Protestants. Powerful in its organi- 
zation, dignified in its worship, discreet in its methods, it 
did its best to conserve the gains and to meet the respon- 
sibilities that came to it from the increasing immigration 
of Europeans of its own faith, and to extend its influence 
and organization from the cities where its natural strength 
lay into the rural communities where it had few adher- 
ents. In the city it built impressive groups of buildings 
for churches, parochial schools, and other institutions. It 
received as its due the unquestioning loyalty of millions 
who trusted its assurances and reverently honored its 
saints and ministers. It attended its children from the 
cradle to the grave. It threw the sanctity of its marriage 
sacrament about the home. It taught its catechism to 
boys and girls in the Sunday school, and placed the foun- 
dations of religion under the system of its instruction in 
the parochial schools. It made its adherents realize their 
unity in the bonds of religion. It even knit together the 
Old World and the New in that same bond of unity. But 
there was no bond of unity with the Protestant or the 
Jew, and Catholics remained a minority of the population. 

The religion of America does not present unity of faith 
or organization in this land of diversity. It shares the 
independent spirit that is so characteristic of American 
business and politics and society. Religion has freed itself 
from state control, reorganized itself on a voluntary de- 
nominational basis, evangelized the multitudes of Ameri- 
can citizens that were fashioning the nation East and 


West, discovered its relations to a needy social order and — 


to an expanding world of scientific ideas, and in the last 





TENDENCIES TOWARD UNITY 205 


generation has been drawing together its forces in a new 
consciousness of the unity of Christian faith and purpose. 
While students of nature have been mastering forest and 
sea and glacier, extracting from the bowels of the earth its 
wealth of iron and copper and gold and coal and oil, har- 
nessing the currents of air and electricity, and making fire 
and water do their bidding, students of religion have 
probed into the nature of God and man and have been 
learning the laws of spiritual force and the resources of 
divinity and humanity. Men have traveled a long way 
from an imminent nature to an immanent God. 

Yet the religion of the churches reflects the conservative 
thinking of centuries long since gone. They are heirs of 
the Reformation theology. They have matured in a new 
environment, but they got their characteristic ideas from 
Europe. Back of the Reformation was a faith and order 
that bore the stamp of authority for nearly a thousand 
unquestioning centuries. It is not strange that Catholi- 
cism flourishes in America, that the attitude of the rank 
and file of Protestants towards new ways of religious 
thinking and functioning is conservative. For them the 
active spirit of America has ranged freely in industry 
and invention, in business expansion and the development 
of a nation’s wealth, but their religion has been reluctant 
to break over the boundaries that were set for it by their 
ancestors. The result is that two conceptions of religion 
are held in America to-day. One thinks of religion in 
terms of pacifying an alien God. By penitence or pen- 
ance, by sorrow and suffering for sin, by sacrament or 
sacrifice, by the way of the Cross and the narrow way 
of self-restraint one may hope to be reconciled with God 
and make his way to the Holy City. The other conception 
is that religion is not a password to Heaven but a potency 
that makes life rich and full in the present, a process of 
growth in grace and divine knowledge. God is light and 
love and liberty, not a Shylock in the heavens eternally 
demanding his pound of flesh. 


206 THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN THE Ud. 


It has been difficult for each of these conceptions to be 
reconciled to each other. The church mind has not been 
able to escape from the influence of modern thought. It 
has felt it in a revulsion from the harshness of the Cal- 
vinistic theology, felt it in a fresh study of the life of 
Jesus and the history of religion, felt it in the widening 
impact of natural science, until the theology of the aver- 
age Christian has become less dogmatic. Yet the church 
has changed little of the content of its theology. As a 
consequence the minority who have escaped from the old 
limitations so completely as to see in them a hurt rather 
than a help to religion are impatient with the slow prog- 
ress that has been achieved. In their reliance upon larger 
ideas about religion they have not always remembered to 
practice the mystic presence of God. They think effi- 
ciently, but they are deficient in feeling. In their assur- 


ance of the divine good will they have been in danger 


sometimes of forgetting the fact of sin and its dire con- 
sequences in warping the very nature of man so that he 
ean not find God. 

Both conservatives and progressives have yet to learn 
that a religion of high value must be enlightening to the 
individual mind, must be constructive of personal char- 
acter, must knit man to God in a conscious persona! rela- 
tionship, and must promote a purposeful and efficient so- 
cial will, and that it must do this for every last man. 
Man does not yet adequately comprehend God; he does 
not yet serve adequately his fellows. To present day 
America have come freedom and a growing sense of power 
to achieve, never equaled before anywhere, but with these 
has come a feeling of disillusionment and a craving for 
higher satisfactions. With this growing consciousness 
and desire human thought is turning to religion to point 
the way and to the church to lead the march to the goal. 
In spite of distrust of old satisfactions, of forms of be- 
lief and organization that have clogged so often the wheels 
of progress, there is an inescapable conviction that re- 





TENDENCIES TOWARD UNITY 207 


ligion alone can save the race from its low ideals and un- 
worthy purposes, that the Christian church reinvigorated 
_ and redirected can consecrate the personal and the social 
will to the task of finding at the end of the road the holy 
grail, In that pilgrimage the American churches are best 
fitted to lead the way, but they need leaders of clear 
vision, wise judgment, and fearless faith. 

As surely as the Norse Vikings sighted the prow of a 
new continent in their adventures into unknown seas, so 
surely will men of high courage sight promontories of 
knowledge and attainment in their ventures of faith, for 
on the small stage of human history are rehearsed the 
greater dramas of the far-ranging spirit. 





INDEX 


Abbott, Lyman, 131 

Academies, 109 

American Home Missionary So- 
ciety, 80 

American Sunday School Union, 
82 

Andover Seminary, 110, 127, 135, 
147 

Anti-Saloon League, 96 

Ae ea A., 118 

Arminianism, 46, 63, 126, 134 

Associations of churches, 62, 
180, 185 

Authority in religion, 12, 16, 17, 
37, 38 


Baltimore, Lord, 38 

Baptism, 121, 175 

Baptists, 15, 34, 36, 41, 45, 50, 
63, 68, 70, 80, 99, 101, 107, 
175, 180, 186, 197 

Beecher, H. W., 131 

Beecher, Lyman, 62, 96 

Bellamy, Joseph, 49 

Bible soaieties, 111 

Biblical criticism, 135, 137 

Bill of Rights, 51 

Blair, 14 

Boston, 46, 49, 127, 128, 161 

Bradford, William, 23 

Bray, Thomas, 14 

Brewster, William, 23 

Bright, John, 91 

pneocd of the Kingdom, 

Browne, Robert, 21, 25 

Brownists, 21, 36 

Bushnell, Horace, 129 

Business. Ethics, 148 


Caaba at Mecca, 28 
Calvinism, 19, 22, 36, 45, 47, 
129, 134 


Cambridge Synod, 46 

Campbell, Alexander, 183 

Camp meetings, 65 

Canada, 7 

Cane Ridge, 65 

Carolina, 15, 60 

Carroll, John, 118 

Catholics, 1, 7, 35, 38, 39, 41, 
51, 55, 66, 68, 83, 110, 117- 
119, 156, 163, 176, 185, 204 

Chalmers, Thomas, 90 

Channing, W. E., 129 

Charity organization, 91, 146 

Charters, 27, 35, 45 

Chauncy, Charles, 48, 106 

Chautauqua, 113, 155 

Christian Commission, 102 

Christian Connection, 184 

Christian Science, 159, 160 

Church, The, 107, 142, 145, 156, 
164, 174, 176, 185, 189 

Church covenant, 25 

Church membership, 12, 25, 41, 
45, 53, 104, 175, 190 

Church of England, 12, 13, 15, 
20, 25, 38, 39, 65 

Church union, 202 

Cities, 88, 142, 147 

City missions, 153, 203 

Clark, Francis E., 179 

Clarke, John, 35, 36 

Clarkson, Thomas, 90 

Colleges, 14, 81, 109, 168 

Colonization, 9 

Colporteurs, 111 

Columbus, 2 

Commissaries, 14 

Compulsory religion, 12, 51 

Community, churches, 198 

Conflict between science and 
theology, 133 

Congregationalists, 21, 23, 25, 
36, 37, 47, 50, 68, 120, 185, 187 


209 


210 


Connecticut, 36, 37, 45 

Conservatism, 87, 115, 170, 171, 
192, 206 

Cooperation, 195 

Cotton, John, 43 

Country Life Commission, 154 

Cumberland Presbyterians, 65, 
115 


Democracy, 39, 54, 78, 86, 114 
Denominationalism, 56, 68, 193 
Denominations, 184 

Disciples, 174, 183, 184, 196 

Disestablishment, 65 

Dissent, 12, 15, 16, 40, 50, 51 

Dunkards, 40 

Dunster, Henry, 36 

Dutch, 9, 11, 38, 39, 40, 181 

Dwight, Timothy, 62 


Eddy, Mary Baker, 161 

Education, 67, 107-110 

Education, Religious, 
114 

Edwards, Jonathan, 46, 48, 105, 
160 

Emmanuel Movement, 161 

Emerson, R. W., 129 

Episcopalians, 13, 45, 57, 68, 
101, (121, 327, ;150,. 164. 174, 
176, 181, 185, 196 

Evangelism, 48, 58, 61, 66, 142 

Evangelical Alliance, 195 

Evangelicalism, 194 

Evolution, 132 

Exchange of territory between 
denominations, 199 

Expansion, 29, 32, 59, 105 


107-111, 


Factory, 91 

Faith cure, 161 

Fanaticism, 118 

Federal Council of Churches, 151, 
200, 201 

Federated churches, 198 

Federation of churches, 199 

Foreign missions, 69, 153, 202 

Forum, Open, 151 

Fox, George, 15, 39 

Franciscans, 

Free Baptists, 94, 107, 197 


INDEX 


French, 7, 9 
Friends, see Quakers 
Frontier, 72, 75 


General Court of Massachusetts, 
26, 44 

Georgia, 16 

Germans, 16, 84, 181 

Going, Jonathan, 80 

Government, 147 

Grand Banks, 2 

Great Awakening, 60, 194 

Greenland, 1 


Half-way Covenant, 41, 42, 43 

Hall, Robert, 90 

Harvard College, 30, 36, 44, 46, 
109, 127 

Home Missions Council, 87, 203 

Home Missions, 76, 78, 79, 80, 
83, 84, 85, 153 

Hooker, Thomas, 36, 43 

Howard, John, 90 

Huguenots, 16 

Humanism, 8 

Humanitarianism, 93 

Hutchinson, Ann, 26, 33 

Hymnody, 165 


Immigration, 84, 153, 182 

Immorality, 43, 76 

Independents, 20, 22, 36 

Indians, 3, 7, 27, 33, 35, 38, 47, 
60, 61, 62, 83, 93, 203 

Individualism, 86 

Institutional church, 152 

Interchurch Movement, 157, 203 

Internationalism, 155 


Jesuits, 7, 38 
Jews, 119, 120 
Johnson, 26 


Kemper, Bishop, 81 
King’s Chapel, 45, 127 
Know Nothing Movement, 118 


Labor problem, 148-151 
Labor unions, 91, 93 
Latin America, 84, 202 
Laymen, 177 


INDEX 


Legislation, 26, 27, 28, 41, 49 
Liberal orthodoxy, 130 
Liberty churches, 156 

Log college, 61, 110 

London Missionary Society, 68 
Luther, 6 

Lutherans, 11, 40, 84, 182, 197 


Magistrates, 26, 33 

Maryland, 14, 15, 38 

Massachusetts, 17, 32, 36, 37, 41, 
46, 48, 50, 61 

Massachusetts Bay Company, 24 

Massachusetts Federation of 
Churches, 198 

Mather, Cotton, 44, 46 

Mather, Increase, 43, 44, 46 

Mathew, Father, 91 

Mayflower Compact, 22 

Mayhew, Jonathan, 49 

Meeting-house, 29, 189 

Mennonites, 40 

Methodists, 16, 60, 63, 68, 90, 
09,101; 112," 260, -1T/,- 181, 
187, 197 

Methodist Book Concern, 112 

Middle colonies, 38 

Migration, 72, 77 

Millerites, 115 

Ministerial education, 61 

Ministers, 13, 14, 15, 25, 26, 29, 
37, 46, 48, 58, 76, 92, 102, 
151, 176, 190 

Missions, 7, 67, 69 

Missionary conferences, 202 

Missionary societies, 14, 57, 69, 
79, 85 

Modernism, 129, 136, 171, 172, 
206 

Moravians, 40, 162 

Mormons, 117 

Mountain Whites, 65 

Movements, 196 

Muhlenberg, H. M., 182 

Music, 164 

Mysticism, 159 


Neglect of religion, 13 
Negroes, 84, 97, 103, 188 

New England theology, 48, 129 
New Haven, 37 


211 


New Jersey, 38 

New Lights, 61 
Newport, 36 
Newspapers, 112, 184 
New Testament, 8, 36 
New Thought, 159 
New York, 38, 95 
Norsemen, 1 

North, The, 102 
Northampton, 46 


Orientals, 64, 202, 203 
Overchurching, 87 


Paine, Thomas, 62 

Palatives, 40 

Penn, William, 39 

Pennsylvania, 39, 64, 95 

Pennsylvania Dutch, 40 

Persecution, 10, 18, 27 

Philanthropy, 67, 145 

Pietists, 40 

Pilgrims, 21, 22 

Plan of union, 68, 79 

Planter’s Plea, 24 

Plymouth, 22, 23, 25 

Plymouth Rock, 28 

Prayer meeting, 161, 163 

Presbyterians, 15, 50, 57, 61, 68, 
96, 98, 101,120, °160, 181, 
197 

Primitive Baptists, 70, 115 

Princeton College, 48, 61 

Prison reform, 94, 95 

Providence, 33, 35 

Psychology of religion, 169 

Publishing houses, 112 

Puritanism, 17, 25, 28, 123 

Puritans, 11, 15, 17, 18, 20, 24, 
ae 28, 36, 38, 39, 50, 108, 160, 
176 


Puritan home, 30 


Quakers, 15, 27, 39, 40, 41, 45, 
50, 94, 95, 98, 156, 159 


Reason, 132, 137 

Reformation, 6, 10 

Reformed churches, 11, 40, 
18] 

Reforming Synod, 44 


212 


Reforms, 90, 147, 148 

Religion a function of govern- 
ment, 12 

Religious customs, 92 

Religious Education Association, 
114, 169 

Religious experience, 136, 158 

Religious liberty, 26, 32, 34, 35, 
36, 38, 39, 41, 45, 49, 51 

Religious life, 124 

Religious literature, 166 

Religious mind, 105, 111, 125 

Religious press, 112 

Rescue missions, 143 

Reunion of denominations, 197 

Reviews, 112 

Revivals, 46, 58, 60, 63, 64, 66, 
142, 163 

Revolution, 16, 49, 62 

Rhode Island, 33, 35, 51 

Robinson, John, 21 

Rural churches, 154, 155 


Salaries, 13 

Salem, 24, 25 

Salvation Army, 144 
Sanitary Commission, 102 
Savoy Confession, 44 
Schwenkfelders, 41 
Science, 132-135, 160, 169 
Science and Health, 161 
Scotch-Irish, 64, 75 
Sectional divisions, 101 
Sects, 87 

Seekers, 34, 56 
Separation of church and state, 


50 

Separatists, 21 

Shakers, 116 

Skraellings, 2 

Slavery, 96-102 

Social Christianity, 149 

Social creed, 151 

Social life, 4, 5, 141 

Social science, 144, 169 

Social service, 200 

Social Service Commissions, 150, 
151 

Social settlements, 146 

Society for the Promotion of 
Christian Knowledge, 14 


INDEX 


Society for the Propagation of 
the Gospel, 14 

Socinianism, 126 

South, The, 15, 16, 28, 59, 62, 
63, 64, 84 97, 188 

Spain, 2, 5, 7, 9 

Spiritualism, 116 

Spiritual religion, 167, 172 

Standing order, 27 

State universities, 110 

Statistics, 191 

Stoddard, Solomon, 46 

Stoddardeanism, 47 

Student Volunteers, 196 

Sunday observance, 26, 30, 43, 
123, 141 

Sunday schools, 82, 113 

Swedenborg, 116 

Swedes, 9, 11, 84 


Taxation, 26, 37, 38, 49. 51 

Temperance, 96 

Temples, 143 

Tennent, William, 61 

Theocracy, 26, 42 

Theological seminaries, 110, 152, 
191 

Theology, 47, 106, 107, 130, 131, 
136-140 

Tract societies, 82, 111 

Trusteeism, 118 


Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 101 

Undenominational organizations, 
195 

Unitarians, 49, 94, 107, 126-129 

United Brethren, 183 

Unity, 132 

Universalists, 49, 107, 130 


Virginia, 12, 13, 15, 32, 38, 50 
Voluntarism, 21, 25, 52 


Wesley, John, 60, 63 

West, The, 75, 78, 80, 82, 88 
Western Reserve, 81 
Westminster Confession, 46 
White, John, 24 

Whitefield, George, 60 
Whitman, Marcus, 81 
Wilberforce, William, 90 


= . 
=e ol 7 


INDEX 213 


Williams, Roger, 26, 33, 34, | Yale College, 46, 62, 109 
51 Young Men’s Christian Associa- 


Winthrop, John, 24, 43 tion, 143, 155, 196 
Women, 96, 178 Young People, 179, 190 
Wonder-working Providence, 26 | Young People’s Society of Chris- 
World Conference on Faith and tian Endeavor, 179 

Order, 197 Young Women’s Christian Asso- 


World War, 105, 156, 201 ciation, 143, 152 


, » 

+ ag f 
Fei ter 
i sy" tac 


P a 








imu 


i 

































































1 1012 0124 











. ‘ _— 
. ’ Caneewaa™ 
} _ : 
. ‘ . 
‘ 2s jt 9 2 
. ue? < N 
: | 
> enn 
_ & : ss 
« 3 fem 
& ‘ 
 % 3 
<a 
3 x 
SS | a : 
* é : 
es a 
Ree} 4 i 
on i 
Ss 4 ”, 
Z| ae 
ae k ; 
1 
cS | ae 
oa | 


> a4 ats 
= : , 4 athe. 


“a 





ip becrerasee 


aie 


ik 


Satis 





